


Summoned

by Cleo_Calliope



Category: Darkest Powers - Kelley Armstrong
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Point of View, Angst, Book 1: The Summoning, Canon Compliant, Derek's POV, Derek's Past, F/M, Horror, Mental Health Issues, Retelling, Therapy, alternate POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-26 04:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 59,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1674488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cleo_Calliope/pseuds/Cleo_Calliope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This really couldn’t have been better if I’d planned it.  Chloe Saunders was going to turn out to be the answer to all my hopes if only I could play it right... Make it imperative for the sake of her sanity that Simon get out of here and find Dad and I had no doubt that he’d do whatever it took to help her, even if it meant leaving me behind."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This story deals with Mental Illness and the use of the threat of Mental Illness to control people. 
> 
> The fact is that Mental Illness is a serious reality for more than 57 million people in the US alone. 
> 
> I'm approaching this subject as someone who has dealt with it for most of her life. I've been through years of therapy. I am on medication and will probably be so for the rest of my life. It has taken years of work to get to the point where I can live a "normal" life and do things that others take for granted, such as holding down a job and living on my own.
> 
> I'm sharing this because I want it understood from the beginning that I take Mental Illness very seriously. Group homes and halfway houses for those dealing with Mental Illnesses do exist and are places where wonderful work is done every day to help those like myself reclaim our lives. I've stayed in such places and cannot give high enough praise for the nurses and doctors I met there or the quality of care I received. They are safe places, havens where someone can find the help they need.
> 
> The Darkest Powers series is a work of fiction only. If you are suffering from any kind of Mental Illness, please, never hesitate to seek out help and to take any diagnoses you may receive seriously. And NEVER stop any medications they put you on without a doctor's supervision. Doing so could be potentially dangerous.
> 
> **There is NO shame in being ill.**
> 
> For more information on Mental Illness or where to get help please visit one of the following sites:
> 
> North America: <https://www.nami.org/>  
> Europe: <http://www.mhe-sme.org/>  
> Australia: <http://aamh.edu.au/>
> 
> (If you know of what organizations exist in non-English speaking areas, please let me know and I'll add them to the list.)
> 
>  
> 
> * * *
> 
>  
> 
> I always loved the character of Derek and have long been fascinated by the idea of what _he_ was thinking during _The Summoning._ After reading the companion short stories of _Dangerous_ and _Divided_ I decided to rewrite the whole thing from his perspective.
> 
> While I did draw extensively from _Dangerous_ and _Divided_ in this story, you **do not** have to have read them to follow it. In fact, it's my goal that you don't even have to have read _The Summoning_ to follow this story as I'd like it to be able to stand on it's own as a full retelling.
> 
> Out of curiosity, if the Darkest Powers series were to be made into movies, what would your ideal cast be?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It would be time for him to be six soon."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, give it up for my new beta reader [BladeQuill](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BladeQuill/pseuds/BladeQuill)! Yay!
> 
> Okay, people - here we go! The reboot of 'Summoned'. My plan it to update every Monday. Give everyone a little something of a pick-me-up for the week ahead. :-) Can't promise I'll always be able to do so, but I'll try.
> 
> Now, a lot of this will be familiar to those of you who read the original story as a great deal of the scenes have simply been lifted from that whole. HOWEVER, there are quite a few new scenes and some moving around of the fashbacks and explanations. I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> FEEDBACK IS LIFE!

**~ Prologue ~**

 

It would be time for him to be six soon.

The nurses would show their teeth at him as they did sometimes and tell him it was his birthday. He didn’t really know what a birthday was, only that it was special enough for them all to have a piece of cake after they finished their dinner. At least, that’s what had happened when it had been time for him to be five and when it had been time for him to be four. He remembered.

A month ago it had been time for one of the other boys to be six. The cake had been chocolate.

He was fairly sure that it had been time for another one of the boys to be seven yesterday. This time, however, there had been no cake because now there were no other boys.

One of the nurses had placed a box on his bed and he was putting his clothes into it as he'd been told to, carefully not looking at the other three beds in the small windowless room he’d slept in for as long as he could remember.

All his life he’d lived here with the other three boys. This place, with its white rooms within and a small walled play area in the back was all the world he knew. He was a good reader and had read books that had such things as mothers, fathers, schools and friends in them. But he didn’t really understand what they were or why they were important.

Sometimes there was another boy. Simon lived somewhere else and a man he called ‘Dad’ would occasionally bring him to play. They always smiled. It was one of the things that made Simon and the Dad man special. When they bared their teeth you knew they meant something nice by it. He’d been the only one who had wanted to play with Simon. The other boys said he wasn’t one of them and were mad when he played with Simon anyway. He hadn’t cared. He didn’t understand why Simon always seemed to be so happy but seeing the other boy smile had always made him happier. 

Mostly, however, it was only the four of them and the nurses and doctors and guards who watched and did nothing when the other boys pushed him down and said he couldn’t play in the places they claimed as their own. Sometimes they clawed at him and bit him and the watchers would murmur words he didn’t know the meaning of. Words like _territory_ , _pack_ , _hierarchy_ and _outcast_.

When the doctors weren’t there to hear, the nurses pinched and called them “little beasts.”

It wasn’t that he minded that they were gone, not really. It only meant that there was no one to push or bite him or take away the toys he wanted play with. He liked that they weren’t there any more, even if it was sometimes too quiet now.

He still didn’t look over at that part of the room, though, because it was in that corner that The Incident had happened. That was what the nurses and doctors called it when they talked together.

Not long ago a younger nurse had come. She’d smiled, like Simon and the Dad man, and told them stories about the world outside the walls of this place. She’d brought treats for them like candy bars and soda pop. She’d always smelled fresh, like she carried with her smells of all those things beyond this place that he didn’t understand but sounded fascinating.

He’d liked her. He'd liked her stories and the way she smelled and the way she smiled, instead of just barring her teeth as the other nurses did. He’d never been hugged by anyone before she’d come and though they’d made him uncomfortable at first, he’d found that once he’d got used to them he liked hugs. 

The other boys, however, had seen her only as a source of treats. Someone they could manipulate. Someone weak. 

Then the other nurses had found out about the treats and told her she couldn't bring them anymore.

She’d told them she was sorry. That night she'd come into their room that night to "tuck them in" as she often did even, though they were all old enough to get into bed by themselves. The other boys had thought that she'd bring them treats anyway. But there weren't any treats and she’d there wouldn’t be any more ever. Then they got mad and stopped being nice, demanding their treats.

They had backed her into a corner and when she kept saying she couldn’t bring any more… He didn’t like to think about that. About the smell of fear and blood. The sound of her screaming as they’d clawed and bitten as they usually only did to him.

He'd run to the door, which was locked as always, and banged on it until his hands were sore. He'd shouted and screamed and made more noise than he ever had before in his life.

The guards had come and they’d taken him to another room where the nurses gave him cookies and milk and told him he was a good boy, that he’d done the right thing. They told him they were proud of him. They hadn’t seemed proud though. Their eyes were hard and they smelled afraid.

He never saw that nurse again and when he’d been taken back to his room in the morning the other boys’ things were gone. No one said where they’d gone and he hadn’t asked. He had no reason to believe anyone would have answered if he had thought to.

After, he learned a new word. One they whispered to each other as they looked at him. 

Dangerous.

Now the nurses seemed afraid whenever they came near him and never did so without a guard in attendance.

He was a good boy, everyone said so. It didn’t stop them being afraid, though, and he didn’t know why.

Today the man Simon called ‘Dad’ had come to see him. He’d still smiled and had come into the room without a guard. He didn’t seem afraid at all. He’d brought a construction set for him that the box said had more two hundred and fifty pieces.

He often brought gifts, always brought smiles and never brought fear.

“How would you like to come home with me?” he’d asked.

“Home?” It was a word he’d read but he wasn’t entirely sure what it meant.

“Where I live. Away from here. With Simon. Now that the other boys are gone…” He trailed off then as though uncomfortable before starting again. “Dr. Banks has agreed to let you come live with us. Would you like that?”

It hadn’t required any thought at all. To live somewhere where there were smiles and no one was afraid sounded very nice. He’d got up from the table, construction set in his hand and had been ready to leave right then.

He couldn’t, though, he was told. First he had to put all his clothes into a box so he could take them with him. So, that was what he was doing.

“Almost done?” the ‘Dad’ man asked, coming into the room behind him.

He nodded, putting the last few shirts in and carefully placing his gift top. He picked up his box, ready.

The man took the box and put it under one arm, taking the boy’s hand with his free one. It felt strange for someone to hold on to him like that. Except for that one, the doctors and nurses had never touched any of them if they could help it. Except sometimes, when the nurses hit or pinched.

The two of them walked past the nurse’s station with the locked door that was the farthest from his room he had ever been and into corridors he’d never seen before. 

Then there were big glass doors and outside… There was a place with many cars in it and beyond that a road. He knew they were cars and what was past them was a road because he’d read about them and seen pictures in books. But he’d never guessed that they would be so big and shiny or that when they drove by on the road they would go so fast or be so noisy.

The only outside he’d known was the walled in playground but past the road were fields and trees and more buildings. He’d never in his few years been anywhere so open, so exposed.

The ‘Dad’ man squeezed his hand and suddenly the boy was very grateful indeed for the hand he held.

“It’s all right, Derek,” he said kindly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

He started to tremble as he stepped beyond the doors and into the world outside but he trusted the man Simon called ‘Dad’. Trusted him even when he wanted him to get into one of those noisy cars and go fast down that road to the place he called ‘home’.


	2. Chapter 1: New Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This girl could be exactly what I needed. What I’d been waiting three months for.
> 
> I had to think and I had to think fast."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because this is the first week, I'll give you a two-for. The Prologue AND Chapter 1. Aren't I nice? *g*
> 
> FEED A STARVING AUTHOR, GIVE FEEDBACK!

  
**~ Chapter 1 ~**  
New Girl

 

_Ten Years Later_

It wasn't long until lunch but as usual, I was too hungry to wait. Besides, even when lunch came I knew I wouldn't be able to eat as much as I needed.

I’d thought it had been hard pretending to be normal before. Everyone knows that teenage boys are always hungry, however, there were limits and since my growth spurts started four years ago I'd had to carefully walk that line during the school day. At the end of the day, though, I'd been able to go home and eat as much as I wanted without worrying about what anyone thought.

That was before.

Now that we lived under a microscope every moment of every day… Well, I'd pretty much just had to get used to never being completely full. I ate as much as I could get away with at meals and then stole as much as I could from the pantry at every available opportunity. It was just about enough to keep my stomach from growling constantly.

"Peeling duty already? What'd you do to deserve that?"

My brother’s voice came from the kitchen ahead of me. I paused, listening to Mrs. Talbot, one of the nurses, who was talking to one of our housemates in the dining room to see if she'd heard, but it seemed his voice was quiet enough. It seemed loud to me but then my hearing, like all my other senses, wasn't exactly normal.

"You must be Chloe," Simon continued.

Ah, the new arrival. She hadn’t made an appearance at dinner last night and breakfasts weren't coed, so we hadn't got a look at her yet. Not that it really mattered. People came and went and as long as they left Simon and me alone they weren’t my problem.

For three months now Simon and I had lived in Lyle House, a secure home for emotionally disturbed teens. Three month were we’d didn’t know where Dad was or what had happened to him. Three of the longest months of my life.

"I-I –" a girl stammered, too loud with Talbot so close. I paused and tensed but she quieted, probably motioned into silence by Simon.

"I'm not supposed to be in here," he whispered. "I'm Simon, by the way."

By the time I came around the corner into the kitchen he'd already disappeared into the pantry and a girl stood in the pantry doorway, her back to me. My first thought was that she was incredibly tiny and therefore not likely to be any threat, no matter what was wrong with her. Not that a regular human was ever a threat to me without a weapon and some serious backup — I’m not exactly normal in the strength department either — but there was always Simon’s safety to be considered.

Over the last couple of years I’d started to get used to towering over just about everyone I met, but this girl made me feel like some kind of giant. Her shoulder length blonde hair had been carefully streaked with red and while I know almost nothing about clothes I recognized the label on her jeans as being upmarket. Which meant that what she could be a threat to what little peace and quiet we had around here. Victoria, aka “Tori”, our resident diva, was either going to adore this girl or loathe her. I, personally, had already written her off. But since there were only a handful of people in the world that I didn’t feel were a waste of my time – consisting almost entirely of Simon and our Dad – that was nothing new.

As I came up behind her she motioned to the box of crackers Simon was taking down from the shelf. "The other one's already open," she said, her voice quiet this time.

"Thanks, but he'll want the whole thing. Right, bro?" Simon said, glancing up at me.

She looked around and yelped – actually _yelped_ – as she saw me behind her.

Yeah, nice to see you too, I thought.

"I-I-I –" She swallowed, staring up at me with over-sized anime eyes. "I didn't see you there."

Duh.

I saw no point in answering. I just looked down at her – _way_ down at her – trying to get her measure. There was no way she was more than five feet and was one of those people who looked like a stiff breeze would blow her over. She didn't seem to have any figure to speak of and I found myself wondering idly if she was even old enough to be here. Peter – our youngest up to this point – was only thirteen of course, but even with the red streaks dyed into her hair, I didn't think that this girl – Chloe, wasn’t it? – looked much more than eleven or twelve.

She was tensed as if ready to run, and the scent of nervousness and a hint of fear hung in the air around her. Maybe that’s why she was here, some sort of anxiety problem. Of course it was always possible she simply found me _that_ scary. Some people did. It was like something deep in their DNA knew what I was or at least that I was dangerous. And I _am_ dangerous. With my strength – what I could do to an ordinary human… well, it wasn’t something I liked to think about.

I reached over her and grabbed the crackers Simon was holding out. Whatever the case, I didn’t care. This girl couldn’t cause any trouble I couldn’t handle, even if she tried. So, I didn't see the point in allowing her to distract me from the vital activity of getting food.

When I tried to leave, though, Simon grabbed the back of my shirt.

"We're still teaching him manners," he said to Chloe, apologetically. Oh fantastic. Simon had picked up on her nervousness and, being Simon, he was going to play the gentleman and try to make her feel at home. That was my brother all over. Unfortunately, he’d decided he wanted me to play nice too.

I hated playing nice. It was never worth the effort and the people were never worth my time. Besides, what was the point? We could never be friends. The fact is, that Simon and I aren’t human. We’re supernaturals; those born with gifts, abilities, whatever you wanted to call them. Because of it there had always been and would always be a divide between us and the rest of the human world. Not being human means we have to be careful about keeping our distance from those around us. This isn’t just because there are far more humans than there are of us and our only real hope of long-term survival is secrecy, although that is true. It’s also because we can hurt humans, even kill them, if we’re not careful. Keeping them at arm’s length is necessary for their safety as well as ours.

More so in my case than in Simon’s, though, which was one of the many differences between us. Simon, like Dad, is a Sorcerer. While he could hurt someone he couldn’t do so by accident since spell casting takes focus. I’m... something else. Something a lot less safe. And hurting or even killing someone without meaning to is a distinct possibility.

Even with Simon’s empathetic nature, however, his demanding my participation here was odd. This wasn’t exactly a summer camp. Everyone here – with the exception of Simon, who was only here because of me – was here because there was something seriously wrong with them. Simon was careful around the other residents because of it. Not that he wasn’t usually polite, he was. Still, he didn’t usually go to the extra effort of trying to make me be polite too.

"Derek, Chloe. Chloe, my brother, Derek."

"Brother?" she asked, glancing between us with the slightly confused look everyone always had when they tried to imagine Simon and I coming from the same set of parents. It always annoyed me but somehow coming from the mini-blonde it irked me more than usual. Yes, I was huge and while maybe not actively ugly, not good looking either. I might have black hair and eyes nearly as dark, but I was about as far from the tall dark and handsome cliché as possible. Simon on the other hand is no more than average height, good looking, blonde and, most importantly, part Korean. We look nothing like one another in any way shape or form. Still, you'd think that in modern America people wouldn't be so confused when presented with a multicultural family. Simon thought it was funny as hell. I didn’t.

"Yeah," I said sarcastically. "Identical twins." She just looked at me blankly. Ah, so the blonde was natural then.

"He's my foster brother," Simon explained. "So I was just about to tell Chloe –"

"We done here?" I interrupted. I'd just heard our Queen Victoria change course abruptly in the hall and getting out of here now would be good. She'd probably heard Simon's voice and having her walk in to find him playing nice with the newbie… Yeah, that was _not_ going to be pretty.

Simon gave that wave and roll of the eyes he always gave when he was trying to simultaneously apologize for my rudeness and disassociate himself from it at the same time. "Sorry. Anyway, I was just going to say welcome –"

"Siiiimooon?" Tori nearly sang, voice sugary sweet. It set my teeth on edge and Simon gave an almost imperceptible wince. While he'd had unwanted admirers before now, none of them had ever been as persistent or as annoying as Tori. And living in the same house meant that he could never get away from her for long. "Aha. I thought I heard you." She curled her fingers around the pantry door and peered around it, giving a too-sweet smile. "You and Derek, always raiding the –"

Then she spotted our companion and her eyes narrowed. I swear, there were lightning flashes in her eyes. I could almost feel sorry for Chloe. Almost.

"Tori?" Simon said.

Her expression flipped from irritation to idolization so fast that it was actually kind of creepy. "Yes?"

He jabbed a finger toward the dining room door where Talbot's voice could clearly be heard as she talked to Liz. "Shhh!"

As Tori babbled inane apologies in a whisper, the newest addition to Lyle House wisely made her escape.

 

*** * ***

 

Even after he’d expected me to play nice, it wasn’t until Simon and I had extricated ourselves from the kitchen — and Tori — that I realized that something had changed. 

“She’s kind of cute,” Simon said out of nowhere as we headed back toward the classroom.

I glanced at him and was surprised to see a glint in his eyes I hadn’t seen there in ages. Simon had always liked girls and they’d always liked him. Well, to be honest pretty much everyone liked Simon. He had a certain charisma that was impossible to define. He made friends easily and usually settled in to any place we moved to fairly quickly. That had been something of a problem as we’d moved around a great deal and it had been hard on him because of it, since every time meant leaving behind the myriad of friends he would have made by then. That had worried Dad almost as much as the fact that we never once left behind anything that mattered to me at all. Simon always had friends, I never had any. It was just the way it was. Since hitting puberty, Simon was also never without a girlfriend for any length of time either.

Until three months ago. Until Lyle House.

Three months ago I’d screwed up, potentially exposing us for what we were.

Three months ago, Dad had disappeared before he could collect us to run again.

Three months ago, we’d been brought here to Lyle House.

In the wake of it all Simon had seemed to... dim somehow. He wasn’t really interested in anything anymore, as though some internal spark had gone out. Even his art – the thing he loved above everything else had suffered.

Art was somehow in Simon’s blood as much, if not more, than the magic that made him a sorcerer. Dad claimed he’d been drawing since he could first hold a crayon and I didn’t doubt it. Art just seemed to flow from him. To be honest, I had always thought of him as an artist first and a sorcerer second. It was just the way he was.

He devoured comic books and manga, working for hours on creating his own. In all honesty, I’d never been able to get into most of them. The plots were always so wildly unlikely as to seem ridiculous to my, admittedly, overly logical mind and the characters always seemed bit over the top – like the teenage boy’s equivalent of a Soap Opera. Not that I’d have ever said that to Simon, of course. It was his thing and I respected that. And Simon was good. He had real talent and an honest passion for it. More than that, though, it made him happy and for me that had always been the bottom line.

Because unlike him, I could remember when I’d had no one. Dad had chosen to take me in when I was six, opening his home and family to a kid that had never known either. Simon was, therefore, more than just my brother. He was my first and best friend. My only friend really. Unlike him I found it difficult to make friends, to connect with anyone outside of my family. It hadn’t mattered to me though because I as long as I had my family I was fine. It had really only ever been Simon, Dad and myself but that had always been okay with me. As long as they were happy and safe and we were together, I had everything I could ever want.

Before three months ago, I had that.

Before, before, before…

Since arriving at Lyle House, Simon had seemed to withdraw into himself. He didn’t stop drawing all together but his interest wasn’t what it had been before. His interest in girls had all but vanished as well. Oh, he’d said that he didn’t want to take advantage of any girl who was already emotionally unstable and while that might have had something to do with it, his complete ambivalence to them seemed to me to be all part of his un-Simonness.

Now, though… now, he thought that the new girl was cute, thought she might be worth the time of making me be nice.

I thought back. Beyond essential facts, I hadn’t really thought much of what Chloe actually looked like. Now I did my best to picture her objectively. Blonde, blue eyes, not much of a figure, but she did have a good bone structure and might actually be pretty if she smiled. While I couldn’t help but wonder if she wasn’t a little young for Simon, his interest caught my interest.

This was the first sign since we’d been here that Simon might just be coming back from wherever it was he’d withdrawn to.

It was heartening, but it also meant that I was going to have to pay a bit more attention to the new girl than I had been anticipating. I only hoped she wasn’t completely unstable.

First things first then, I’d have to get a look at her records. They were all kept in locked up in the office of Dr. Gill, the psychiatrist who worked with us here. Since the locks in this place were generally pretty crap, that wasn’t a problem. I’d already had a look at the files of all the other residents, just to know what we’d be dealing with. I probably would have gotten around to taking a look at Chloe’s as well at some point. Now, though, I decided I had better do it sooner rather than later.

Still, at this point any sign of Simon coming back to himself was something to be encouraged. So, for once, I didn’t roll my eyes or any of the other usual signs of disgust I made when yet another girl caught Simon’s attention. It was little enough, but to do any more than that would be to rouse Simon’s suspicion.

 

*** * ***

 

Even before my abnormal genetics kicked in, I'd never really understood why people felt the need to talk during meals. After you finished there would be plenty of time for that, but while the food was on the table I just didn't see the point. 

Things at today’s lunch were, by and large, the same as they were most days.

Peter, the only boy here other than Simon and myself, played his PSP in order to ignore us all as he ate. He wasn’t a problem. In fact, with his interest in video games and general low-key attitude I could almost have liked him. I certainly never minded having him around.

Victoria twittered away with Liz, another girl of her and Simon’s age, like a couple of out of tune birds. Liz generally wasn’t a problem either, in that she didn’t bother either Simon or I so I could safely ignore her existence most of the time. The last of the girls had chosen, as she often did, not to join us for lunch. I didn’t blame her. It was the only way for her to avoid Tori's constant needling on the subject of her weight. I really didn’t get it. Rachelle, or Rae as she preferred, may not have been the skinniest girl I’d ever met but I wouldn’t have thought even the strongest critic could have called her fat. Apparently, I’d have been wrong about that. She may have entered Lyle House because she was supposedly a pyromaniac – though I found the diagnosis decidedly suspect – but she was sure to have an eating disorder by the time she left it. 

Things would have stayed reasonably quiet since our new housemate didn't seem overly verbose but Simon’s interest had been piqued. To my surprise, he didn’t just go out of his way to be pleasant to her, he was trying to flirt with her. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one to notice his out of character behavior. Victoria’s usual endless twittering with Liz stopped and I could see her getting angrier by the minute.

Was that girl ever going to get the message that 'I'm not interested in you' actually meant that Simon wasn't interested?

Not in this case it seemed. Victoria was the kind of pretty, rich girl who was clearly used to getting her way. Probably daddy’s little princess. She certainly acted like stuck up royalty around here. Simon was probably the first guy ever to reject her and the idea that any guy wouldn’t be interested in her seemed to be incomprehensible in her world.

In spite of Tori’s glares and Chloe’s apparent shyness, Simon’s charm was managing to draw her out a little. Not a surprise. Simon could charm anyone. I listened carefully. If she was a total looney it was best to know as soon as possible. However, as the meal progressed there didn't seem to be anything obviously wrong with her. Tense, even a bit jumpy – some kind of anxiety problem seemed more and more likely – but otherwise okay. The only real surprise was that she was fifteen, the same age as Simon and only a year younger than myself. She sure didn't look it, but then again, if it weren't for the acne from hell I could probably pass for eighteen. Actually, even with the acne from hell I could probably pass if I really tried, so I wasn’t one to judge.

Like us, Chloe had moved around a lot and she and Simon started bonding over moving nightmare stories. It was the most life I’d seen in him in ages. Unfortunately, that wasn't allowed to go on for long. Tori simply had to interrupted the flow, attempting to monopolize Simon's attention by babbling some inane story about moving even though she'd never moved house in her life.

In an effort to get her to shut up Simon started asking Chloe about school. That was when Simon went from interested to enthralled as it turned out Chloe attended a private art school instead of public school. Better and better. If she were another artist, she’d be exactly the kind of girl Simon would really take to. Victoria was probably thinking along the same lines as I was and was _not_ pleased.

"Art school," she breathed, overdoing the awe as much as she could so that no one could possibly mistake the intended sarcasm. "Isn't that just fascinating. Tell me, Chloe. What do you study there? Ghost photography? Ghost writing?"

I looked up in time to see Chloe choke on something her eyes widening almost comically as she lost what little color she had. 

"Oh." Tori turned innocent eyes on Simon. "Didn't Chloe tell you why she's here? She sees dead people."

"Really?" Peter said, for once looking up from his game. "Cool."

I blinked. Okay, that was… unexpected. And very, very interesting.

Ghosts did exist, of course, and some people could see them. You can’t grow up as a supernatural without being aware of that basic fact. I eyed Chloe speculatively.

The look on her face was one of pure horror and her eyes darted around the room, as though looking for a way out.

"It's not like that," she managed to get out, sounding slightly desperate. "I-I-I –" Upset now, the slight stutter from earlier was back and worse than ever.

"There she goes," Tori sighed. "Liz, slap her back. See if you can restart her."

"Stop being such a bitch, Tori," Simon hissed, incensed. Simon had never been able to stand bullies. Something that had got him into trouble on more than one occasion.

I turned my attention back to my meal, torn between excitement and realism. Someone with the ability to communicate with the dead, raise zombies, and a few other rather gruesome things was called a necromancer, yet another of the supernatural races. However, they were one of the rarer types. There were, what… a couple hundred necromancers in the entire of North America? And one of them just happens to end up here? Possible, sure, but not likely.

Still, it was possible and if she was another supernatural...

"I didn't mean it that way," Tori was saying pleadingly, having realized that her attempts at showing up a potential rival had backfired badly. "Like Peter said, it's kinda cool. If she does see ghosts, maybe she could help Liz with her, you know, poltergeist."

"Tori!" Liz shrieked, her fork clattering to her plate and a note of the hysteria that was, by now, all too familiar in her voice. Liz wasn’t usually a problem. Right up to the point when suddenly she was.

"Here we go," I muttered under my breath.

In the ensuing chaos I grabbed the last of the casserole before it could be knocked off the table – yes, this had actually happened before. And, once again, our newest housemate took the opportunity to run for it.

I didn’t blame her in the least.

I finished eating quickly. I had a lot of thinking to do – fast. It was now imperative that I get a look at Chloe’s file as soon as possible. While I couldn’t help but feel that the chances of another supernatural ending up here weren’t high, it wasn’t actually impossible. And necromancy _was_ the exactly the kind of thing that would get a kid put in someplace like Lyle House if she and her family weren’t sure what was happening. I mean, in the human world who else but a crazy person would see and hear things no one else could?

Simon was livid on her behalf and that already had the barest kernel of a plan forming my mind.

This girl could be exactly what I needed. What I’d been waiting three months for.

I had to think and I had to think fast.


	3. Chapter 2: Necromancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I glanced around the basement but there wasn't anything there that I could see. The scent of her anxiety hung in the air, though, and something about her watchfulness reminded me that just because I couldn't see it, didn't mean it wasn’t there."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, a triple post. Just this once. ;-)
> 
> FEEEEEDBAAAACK!

**~ Chapter 2 ~**

 

It was Simon's job to take the trash out to the shed after lunch that day and he asked for my help with the cart, which meant he wanted to talk about something without the possibility of an audience. You couldn't be too careful in a place like this.

I was fairly sure what it was he'd want to talk about but had followed him out anyway. The look of horror on Chloe's face when Tori had dropped her little bombshell had been bound to tug at Simon's heartstrings.

"Do you think she might be a necromancer?" Simon demanded without preamble, once we were out of earshot of the house.

"I don't know," I answered truthfully. “It’s not impossible.” Statistically it was wildly unlikely but I wasn’t about to tell Simon that, at least not until I decided how to deal with this situation. 

Simon frowned. “Could a supernatural kid be born into a non-supernatural family?”

It was a good question and one I’d been pondering myself. If she’d been born to necromancers, they would have known what was happening and she wouldn’t have ended up here. However, I’d already come up with a possible answer to that question.

“Necros aren’t like sorcerers or witches,” I said. “You’re a sorcerer because Dad’s one, end of story. But if a necro marries a human instead of another necromancer, the kids they have don’t necessarily _have_ to be supernatural. Sometimes they’re just regular humans.”

That much I was fairly sure of. Beyond that, however, I only had conjecture. In all honesty I didn’t know all that much about necromancers. It was true, though, that they weren’t like some of the other supernatural types. Sorcerers married human women and could only have sons. Those sons where always, or nearly always, sorcerers. It was the same with witches, except they only ever had daughters. Those like me were also a single sex race, all male. The genes were passed from father to son with no exceptions. I was what I was because my biological father, whoever he was, had been one. Although, unlike Simon, I could conceivably have sisters. However, any sisters I did have would just be regular humans as only male offspring inherited or could pass on the supernatural traits.

Necromancers, however, were different. Like seers and shamans, they could be either male or female. If they married a human the children were usually supernaturals, but not always. How the genetics worked beyond that, though, I had no idea. I didn’t think anyone did. The genetics of supernatural traits isn’t something that’s well understood.

Simon opened his mouth to continue but was interrupted as van Dopp stuck her head out the door.

“Since when does it take both of you to take the trash out?” she demanded.

I rolled my eyes and left Simon to finish his chores while I headed back inside, mind whirling.

Okay, so I know that a lot of parents walk out on their kids when things get bad, it happens every day. And I suppose every kid who’s abandoned thinks that their parent is different. The fact is, though, that Christopher Bae would _never_ have left us of his own free will. He’d taken me in when he didn’t have to and then he’d packed up Simon and I and run. He said we were running from the people he used to work for. That much I believed. The part I didn’t believe was that it was because they’d wanted him to blackmail people for them. I remembered a lot of phone calls before we left, Dad arguing with people and while my hearing wasn’t as good then as it is now, what I am sure of is what came up in those conversations over and over. My name. I remembered more of where I’d lived before Dad adopted me than I’d ever admit. I remembered what happened to the other three boys.

Dad had taken me in and then run because of me, because of what I was. Someone who was willing to be on the run for ten years to protect a kid who wasn’t even his wasn’t going to walk out on one that was, no matter what.

Every few months it had been a new place, new school, new names. We almost never spent an entire school year in the same school.

Three months ago we’d been ready to run again, ready to disappear and become new people somewhere else; but dad never picked us up from school that day. Simon and I had walked home to find that the car was already packed and ready to go. Dad’s wallet and keys were on the table inside the door where he always left them, but there was no sign of him. There hadn’t been time to figure out what to do, to try and find him. We were picked up by social services too quickly.

Humans don’t usually see the supernatural even when it’s shoved in their faces. They look for the most logical explanation long before they look outside of what they know. To be honest, in nearly all cases, this is the right approach. It’s rare that that’s not the case since the supernatural isn’t a common occurrence if you aren’t born to it.

The reason we’d been ready to run, the reason Dad feared we’d be found out was that I’d hurt someone in the way I shouldn’t have been able to. Without knowing I was a supernatural, the most likely explanation for what I’d done was some kind of mental illness. So when social services caught up with us and Dad was nowhere to be found, they’d decided the best place for me was a facility designed to deal with teens suffering from mental disorders.

The problem was what to do with Simon. I’d come to be of two minds about the fact that they had put him in here with me, deciding it was best to keep us together for the time being. For one thing, I’d have gone crazy worrying about him if they’d separated us. If I hadn’t still had my brother I don’t know what I would have done. On the other hand, there was nothing wrong with Simon and he shouldn’t be punished for the fact that I’m... not normal.

Worse, though, was the fact that Dad _still_ hadn’t come for us. After all this time the only reason he wouldn’t have come for us is if he couldn’t. And if he couldn’t come for us, we had to go to him.

Technically, that shouldn’t be too hard. Dad had taught Simon a spell to find him if we were ever separated. It was the best chance of getting our lives back. Unfortunately, the spell was complicated, needed special supplies and was not something that could easily be done when you’re more or less under surveillance 24/7.

Only Simon could do the spell. I couldn’t help with that since I don’t have any magic. So what I needed to do was get Simon out of Lyle House. Once out, he could use that spell, find Dad and hope like hell that he’d be able to help him when he found him. As a plan, it had its flaws. That I knew very well. Unfortunately, at the moment, it was the only one I had.

There was only one problem and it wasn’t Lyle House’s supposedly great security. I’d figured out how to get past that by the end of the first weekend.

No, the problem was Simon himself. He flatly refused to leave, not without me; and if there was one thing I’d come to be sure of, it was that – unlike him – I was exactly where I should be.

Even though they were working with only part of the facts, I still felt that the doctors here might still be on the right track when they’d diagnosed me with Anti-Social Personality Disorder. Here I felt there was a chance for me to get control over what I was.

For the time being, I didn’t trust myself outside the walls of Lyle House any more than the doctors and nurses here did. 

It seriously pissed Simon off. He refused categorically to accept that just maybe I did need help. What was worse, he wouldn’t leave without me.

So, here we were. Stuck. 

It had been three months and Dad was still out there somewhere, still in trouble. 

Three months and Simon was still not... _Simon_ somehow.

Three months and he still flatly refused to go find Dad because I didn’t trust myself to leave Lyle House.

Three months where the only thing I’d ever had that mattered, my family, was lost.

Now, however, there was Chloe. A possible necromancer in here with us. There had to be a way to use that, of that much I was sure. She was a wild card here that could upset the balance in my favor. What I needed most at this point was to find out more about our new housemate.

 

*** * ***

 

A chance to start learning more about Chloe came sooner than I could have reasonably hoped for.

I headed back into the kitchen after all the lunch things were cleaned up, hoping to grab some food to hide in my school bag for during afternoon classes.

When I entered the kitchen I could hear voices coming up from the basement stairs. Chloe had apparently joined Rae in working on the laundry. They seemed to be getting along alright and as Rachelle was one of the less unstable members of the household, I felt that boded well for Chloe’s potential sanity. As Rae was the topic of conversation, however, not Chloe, I didn't bother paying too much attention.

Then I had to duck into the pantry to avoid Talbot, who headed through the kitchen and downstairs to call Rachelle up for class. There hadn’t been time yet for Chloe’s school to send over anything for her to work on, so she was left to finish folding the laundry alone.

Perfect.

As soon as they were gone I headed downstairs.

When I got there, though, Chloe had abandoned the pile of clean clothes and stood with her back to the door, jiggling the knob of the door of the closet on the other side of the room.

"Locked," she said to herself.

She tried turning the knob again a few times as if testing her conclusion. That was one of the few doors in this place that you actually did need the keys for. Either that or decent lock picks. I'd opened every door in this place within the first few days of arriving here. It was just part of what I was, according to Dad. I had to know my environment, know everything about it before I could sleep comfortably in a new place. I'd also wanted to know all the possible escape routes for Simon. So, I knew that this particular door lead only to an empty closet and a trap door into a dirt crawlspace with nothing more interesting than Lyle House's accounts in a fireproof box. Nothing of any real interest. I'd even read through the accounts one day when I was bored.

Chloe released the door and raised her fingers to her temples like she'd suddenly acquired a headache. Or was trying to block something out?

When she spoke again it was in a clear voice as if she was speaking to another person. "The door is locked and I'm going upstairs."

She turned around abruptly and nearly smacked into me, letting out the same little yelp that she had when she'd seen me behind her earlier. She stumbled back away from me and into the closet door behind her as if I'd tried to hit her. Jeez, this girl was jumpy.

Then again, if she was seeing ghosts that kind of made sense. Of course, mental illness also fit the bill, but I was trying to be optimistic.

"Who were you talking to?"

"Myself," she answered, a bit too quickly. She flushed as she said it and wouldn't meet my eyes. Someone really should teach her to lie better because this was just pathetic.

"Huh."

"Now, if you'll excuse me..." She went to step around me and I side-stepped into her path. Scared and jumpy and talking to people that weren't there. Yes, of course, that _could_ be a sign of mental illness but I was desperate for it to be something else. Besides, wouldn’t someone who was that crazy think the rest of us were nuts for _not_ seeing what was so evident to them? I wasn’t actually sure about that.

"You saw a ghost, didn't you?" I demanded. I knew I’d been too confrontational the moment the question was out of my mouth. Chloe’s flush disappeared and she blanched, making the transition to deathly pale even more dramatic than it had been at lunch.

She still managed to force a laugh, though. "Hate to break it to you," she said with forced cheerfulness. "But there's no such thing as ghosts." She sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than me.

"Huh."

I glanced around the basement but there wasn't anything there that I could see. The scent of her anxiety hung in the air, though, and something about her watchfulness reminded me that just because I couldn't see it, didn't mean it wasn’t there. I looked back at Chloe.

"What do you see, Chloe?" I asked, trying not to sound too intimidating. Maybe if I knew what she was seeing it might give me a clue as to whether she was hallucinating or what.

"I-I-I don't s-s-s–"

She really was upset now. When she was calm she spoke fine but it was clear that whenever she got too upset she started speaking too quickly and stuttered. She was easier to read than anyone I’d ever met.

"Slow down,” I told her, trying to be helpful. “What do they look like? Do they talk to you?"

She stilled, looking at me oddly. "You really want to know?"

No, I was asking because I didn’t give a damn. “Yeah,” I said, a little irritated.

She chewed on her lip as though debating her next words, then raised herself onto the balls of her feet, trying to get closer to my height. I leaned in, the scent of her anxiety thick in the air between us, but already less than it had been when I’d first entered the basement. It made sense that if she was going to tell anyone about what she saw she'd rather say it quietly, in case one of the nurses heard.

“They wear white sheets with big eye holes. And they say 'Boo!'" Her nervous expression turned to a rather impressive glare given how unthreatening she was. "Now get out of my way."

I couldn't help but smile and only barely held back a laugh. She looked about as dangerous as an enraged kitten but I had to give her points for effort. I stepped out of her way, realizing there was no benefit in pushing things now.

What did surprise me, though, was that she wasn't afraid of me. She jumped and yelped, but that had been because I’d startled her when she was already nervous. Whatever was making her so nervous, though, it wasn't me. People usually backed off so quickly, something about them scaring them. No matter what Dad said, I couldn't help but wonder if they couldn't somehow sense what I was, if some primitive part of the human brain didn't register that I was dangerous.

There was something refreshing about Chloe's lack of fear. It was so rare that anyone stood up to me, much less that they did so without being actively afraid while they did it. Chloe’s scent of nervousness, however, had lessened as she spoke to me instead of increasing. Unusual.

Then again, if she were seeing ghosts, I supposed that for once in my life I would seem the less scary option.


	4. Chapter 3: Lyle House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I still didn't know if the new girl really was a necromancer and just for that moment, I didn't care... I’d seen the honest concern in Simon’s eyes and if Chloe could be my catalyst, then that was all that mattered."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Antisocial Personality Disorder, sometimes known as sociopathy, is a real and serious Mental Illness effecting approximately 1% of adults.
> 
> The references to it in this story are not in any way meant to trivialize the seriousness of the disorder or to downplay the devastating effects it can have on a person or their family. I have done a great deal of research on it for this story but I do not claim to be any kind of expert. 
> 
> Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is also real and has been found to be effective in treating many kinds of Mental Illness, including ASPD. The methods described in this story are based on real CBT practices and are sometimes used to treat aggression. However, each person is different. The use of any particular technique in this story may not be suitable for everyone. Please talk to your therapist or doctor about whether any of these methods would be helpful to you. 
> 
> And please see my author's notes for the story (attached to the prologue) re: Mental Illness.
> 
> For more information on Antisocial Personality Disorder or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy please visit one of the following pages:
> 
> [Mayo Clinic - Antisocial Personality Disorder](http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/antisocial-personality-disorder/home/ovc-20198975)   
>  [NIMH - Antisocial Personality Disorder](http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/antisocial-personality-disorder.shtml)   
>  [Cognative Behavioral Therapy](http://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/cognitive-behavioral-therapy/home/ovc-20186868)   
>  [Types of Psychotherapy](https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Treatment/Psychotherapy.aspx)   
>  [Cognative Behavioural Therapy](http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cognitive-behavioural-therapy/pages/introduction.aspx)
> 
> (No, those are not spelling mistakes in the titles. The sites span both sides of the Atlantic and so span British English and American English spelling practices.)

  
**~ Chapter 3 ~**  
Lyle House

 

Lyle House ran on a strict schedule of activities. It made sense as it was the only way for two adults to handle a house of seven mentally ill teenagers. Besides, most forms of therapy for mental illness stressed the importance of routine in the individual’s life. The fewer surprises there were, the better.

The only part of the daily routine I’d come to actively look forward to was the part many of the other resident’s dreaded, my daily session with the psychiatrist. Then again, unlike most of the residents here, I took my diagnosis seriously and was actively committed to getting better.

I still remembered the whispers of the doctors and nurses from when I was little. They’d said I was dangerous. When I was old enough to understand what that meant Dad had insisted that they’d been wrong, prejudiced.

Turns out, they’d been right after all.

I could make every excuse in the world. I could point out that the kid had been going after Simon with a knife. That I’d been thinking about protecting my brother and not my actions. That I hadn’t intended to actually hurt the guy. That all I’d wanted was that kid and his knife away from the only friend I’d ever had. That I’d been scared.

It’s all true, of course, but it doesn’t excuse what I did. There are no excuses for what I did.

We hadn’t been going to the school for long and we didn’t fit in. Me because the school didn’t know what to do with someone in an advanced math class and Simon because he’s part Korean in an area that didn’t know how to handle anyone who wasn’t purely Caucasian.

They’d just been a bunch of punk bullies going after a kid who wasn’t white enough for them. I’d come around the side of the school to meet Simon and saw them crowding around him. I’d been annoyed but not scared. Simon knew how to fight and between us I knew we could handle the situation.

Then, I saw one of them pull a knife and that was when I’d stopped thinking. I’d charged across to them and tossed the other boy away from Simon without a second thought.

No, I didn’t mean to throw him into a wall. I certainly didn’t mean to throw him into that wall so hard that I damaged his spinal cord.

It doesn’t matter.

Simon, Dad, and I aren’t human. We’re supernaturals and because of that we have to be careful. I grew up knowing that, knowing I had to treat ordinary humans with caution.

At sixteen, I may not yet be fully comfortable with the size and strength I now had, but I knew I had it. Being able to bench press more than three times what a normal human can, I was well aware that I had to be careful. That day, though, I hadn’t been. Without even thinking about what I was doing, without even really _trying_ , I’d thrown a kid my own age into a wall so hard I’d broken his back. Last I’d heard they still weren’t sure whether he’d ever walk again.

I did that.

One moment of rage; one moment when I forgot about anything but being afraid. That’s all it takes when you’re like me.

That one thoughtless act had destroyed everything. The next day was bad and by the end of it Dad was already packing us up for another quick move, ready to pick us up after school and run.

We never got the chance.

Shortly after coming to Lyle House the two psychiatrists here, Dr. Gill and Dr. Davidoff, reviewed my case and diagnosed me with Antisocial Personality Disorder, the inability to empathize with others or to care if I hurt them. The disorder also includes fits of rage that make me even more dangerous.

Simon thought it was bullshit and said so frequently, insisting they were wrong merely because they couldn’t take into account the fact that I’m a supernatural. I wasn't so sure. Yes, I could empathize with him and with Dad. Besides them, though, and a few close family friends, I couldn't care less about the people I met. I could never seem to connect with people, especially kids my own age. The things they cared about made no sense to me. I couldn’t enter into their interests and had never been great with social graces to begin with. Since there seemed to be little point in trying to get to know people I knew I could never to relate to on any level, I never bothered.

Yes, I cared about what I'd done to that guy but not until after the fact. After I'd put him in a wheelchair. At the time when I'd seen that knife I couldn't have cared less.

The ability to realize I'd screwed up after the fact along with the ability to care for one or two people didn't make the diagnosis wrong. It just made it incomplete, since they didn’t know about how unnatural I really was.

It’s not just that I’m not like ordinary humans. I’m not even like other supernaturals. Dad said that I was no different than any other supernatural. The way family friends who knew what I was had eyed me over the years said differently.

I’m not safe, that’s what it comes down to. I’d never wanted to hurt anyone but it turns out that I don’t always have control over whether I do or not. Since coming to Lyle House, though, I’d begun to feel that here, I might have a chance. With help maybe I could get better, gain enough control to be safe around people.

It was why I never minded my daily session with Gill. She believed I could get better, believed I had a future where I wouldn’t necessarily be a danger to those around me. She took my fears seriously, acknowledged that they were justified, and helped me find ways to deal with what I was.

I’d been monosyllabic with her when I’d first come here, distrustful of everyone. Gill had worn me down though. She’d patiently explained my diagnosis, what it meant and what I could expect if I didn’t get help as opposed to the life I could have if I did. I’d been curt and surly but she’d refused to give up on me. Day after day and week after week. I’d come to appreciate that more than I could have expressed. Now, I trusted that she really was trying to help me get better so that someday I might be able to live a reasonably normal life.

When I came in that afternoon she was seated at her desk, scribbling notes, likely from the session with Victoria she’d had right before me.

She glanced up and gave me a quick smile before going back to whatever she was writing. I sat down across from her and waited. I didn’t mind. She was careful about documenting everything about each of her sessions with us and I understood why.

A small woman in her late thirties, Gill was very neat and always moved in very precise ways. She was, also, always scrupulously professional. I knew some of the other residents found her a bit chilly but I actually found her clinical detachment reassuring. She wasn’t here to be my friend, she was here to be my doctor. It was something I’d come to appreciate about her. I didn’t like it when adults tried to be chummy with me, it put me off. Especially when they were in a position of authority over me. Gill’s cool, down to business approach to therapy allowed me to simply focus on what I needed to do instead of constantly second guessing her motives.

She was using a kind of behavioral cognitive approach to my therapy. Instead of just asking how I felt about everything or trying to uncover childhood trauma or whatever, we focused on the patterns of thought that were a problem so that I could work actively on altering those patterns. It was a problem-focused and goal-oriented system that I appreciated. I wasn’t a touchy-feely kind of person and Gill respected that, instead encouraging me to take an active role in my recovery.

After another moment, Gill stopped writing and closed the file she’d had open when I arrived.

“Sorry about that,” she said, giving me another of her quick smiles. “I wanted to get everything down while it was still fresh.”

I nodded. If I was her I’d have felt the same.

She put aside the file from before and opened the file under it. Then she folded her hands over it and turned her full attention to me.

“So, why don’t we start with your mood charts?” she said, getting down to business the way she knew worked best with me.

I pulled the charts I had out of my book bag and handed them over. There were two of them, a daily mood chart and a weekly one. 

The daily chart listed times from 6 am to 6 am in two hour increments down the left side. In the center were boxes to check for ‘Sad’, ‘Angry’, ‘Tired’, ‘Anxious’ and so on. Down the right side was an area for notes. I filled it out throughout the day, indicating how I felt and its intensity by putting a number between 1 and 10 in the appropriate box before noting what I was doing and anything else that may have affected my mood. It was to keep track of how specific environmental factors made me feel. Specifically which ones made me angry. The weekly chart had the same times down the right left side, only in four hour increments with the days of the week across the top. I also filled it out throughout the day. The daily one was to track the patterns of anger, annoyance and so on in a detailed way while the weekly one was to help identify patterns and trends.

I was also supposed to be keeping a journal, recording each day what specific things made me angry and how I’d handled the anger. That was more work and I was rather glad that we weren’t going to be dealing with that in this session as I hadn’t finished my entry for the day before yet. 

While it was important to work on remembering that other people were in fact people, it was also equally important to work on learning to control my temper. We generally switched back and forth between the two focuses in our sessions. As yesterday had been a ‘people are people’ day, today would be focused on anger management.

Gill nodded to herself as she glanced over the sheets, making a few notes in my file.

“Alright,” she said finally, handing the as yet incomplete weekly one back across her desk but keeping the daily one, which was from the day before. “Let’s start with when the others left for lunch yesterday. You indicate that you were quite angry while talking with Simon beforehand. Why was that?”

I took a deep breath before answering. I had to walk a thin line in therapy. There were things I couldn’t tell her if I didn’t want to be diagnosed as totally delusional. On the other hand, I wanted to be as honest and open with her as possible. By now, the only subjects I wasn’t totally honest with her about were the supernatural aspects of my life and, of course, the fact that I intended to get Simon out. Other than that, though, I made myself answer her questions as fully as I could. Complete honesty was one of the secrets to successful therapy. Still, that didn’t make it easy. This particular issue might have been something I could talk openly about but that didn’t make doing so comfortable.

“He was angry because I wasn’t allowed to go with them for lunch,” I told her. 

Every time a new kid was brought to live at Lyle House the staff took everyone else out for a few hours so the newbie could get settled in without distractions. Everyone, except for me that is. I wasn’t considered safe enough even to be taken out for an afternoon, so I was simply confined to the room I shared with Simon.

It pissed Simon off but what pissed him off even more was that I agreed with them. I love my brother with everything in me but here were times when I wanted to shake him. He’d been there, he’d seen what I’d done. Doesn’t matter. He can’t see me for what I am because I’m his brother. Period. I love him for that, too, even while I sometimes hate him for it.

“We go through this every time they go out,” I continued, feeling myself starting to get upset again. “Simon gets mad because I can’t go and then gets even more pissed because I agreed that I shouldn’t.” And every time it hurt just a bit more that he still insisted that there was nothing wrong with me. “He still refuses to see me as potentially dangerous,” I said, though she already knew. We’d discussed this particular issue many times in my sessions.

“And that still makes you angry, even though he’s always felt this way,” she said in a matter of fact tone.

I shrugged. “I know I should get over it but…” I fell silent and Gill waited patiently until I could figure out what I wanted to say. She was good at that, never pushing me. Allowing me the time to find the right words.

“I have a lot of work to do,” I said. “I know that I’m only starting and that this is going to take a long time. The thing is, I want his support. I don’t want to have a fight every time I try to bring up what we’re talking about in my sessions or whenever he sees me filling out my mood charts. I want to be able to talk to my brother about what my diagnosis means and how I’m trying to learn to live with it.”

Gill nodded. “I’m glad to hear you say that. You’re right that we’ve only just started and that you have a long road ahead of you. The fact, though, that you want to be able to talk to your foster brother about what’s happening in your therapy and how you’re learning to cope with your illness is a good sign.”

I just shrugged again. It didn’t mean a whole lot when Simon refused to be of any help.

“How do you feel about this right now?” Gill asked.

“Angry,” I admitted. “Frustrated. Why does he have to be so damn stubborn over this? He was there! He saw what I did!”

“Deep breaths,” Gill told me. I stopped and took several breaths until I felt a little calmer.

Still, I felt a little better for shouting, even if only for a moment. I couldn’t yell at my brother. Not only would it do no good but it would put even more strain on an already tense relationship. Here, though, in Gill’s office I could be angry. I could shout and swear, get some of this out of my system. Here was safe.

“Why do you think he still refuses to accept your diagnosis?”

“He’s my brother,” I said. “He loves me. Unfortunately, in Simon’s case love really is blind.”

“Are you sure that’s all it is?” she asked.

It was a question she’d asked me before and I still wasn’t sure where it was supposed to go. I’d thought about it quite a bit, trying to see why else Simon might not accept it. This time, however, I thought I might have an answer.

“Because he doesn’t think that Dad would believe it,” I told her. “He’s said that before, that Dad wouldn’t agree.”

She nodded as though that were the answer she’d been waiting for. “And do you think he would?”

“I don’t know.” It was a difficult thing to admit. Worse to think that if he hadn’t disappeared he might not have got me the help I’d come to understand I needed. “He never thought my temper was a real problem. I know my isolation bothered him but again, I don’t think he saw it as anything more than me being me.”

“He didn’t see you as potentially having a mental illness,” Gill said for clarification.

“No, he didn’t.” It hurt to acknowledge. There was no one I respected, admired or trusted more than my dad. He’d been the one to save me from the same fate as the other boys, I was sure of that. He’d raised me as his own even knowing what I was. 

I realized that this is what Gill had been working towards for the last week. Something I’d refused to discuss before now. Whether _Dad_ rather than Simon would see me for what I was or if he’d be just as blind because he loved me.

“We never had a chance to deal with what I’d done that day,” I said defending him. “He never really had the chance to deal with the fact that I’d actually hurt someone.”

“Did he indicate he felt you needed help?” she asked.

“No, but he didn’t blow off what happened the way Simon does either.” It was true but from the slight pursing of Gill’s lips I could tell she felt I was splitting hairs.

I didn’t know if I was or not and that made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want to believe that Dad wouldn’t have seen what happened for what it was, a sign that something was wrong with me. At the same time, though, I couldn’t be sure that he would have seen it the way I’d learned to either. I just couldn’t be sure if he would have understood my need for psychiatric help. Getting it as a supernatural was a whole other story, of course. But would he have tried?

Whatever Gill saw on my face made her back off the subject and she moved on to discussing the anger management techniques we’d been going through and how well they’d been working.

Still, I could tell this was a subject we’d revisit in the future.

 

* * *

 

Simon was unusually quiet when we were back in our room that evening. I was still feeling a little unsettled from my session that afternoon, though, so I let him stay absorbed in his own thoughts. Besides, I knew he’d talk when he was good and ready. Simon never kept things to himself for long. Even now, when our relationship was the most fraught it had ever been, he always told me what was on his mind eventually. That night it wasn’t until after the lights were out that he spoke his thoughts.

“What are the chances of a necromancer ending up here?”

I was actually a bit surprised that he was still thinking about that. I struggled to pull my thoughts back to Chloe.

“Not high,” I answered. Nearly infinitesimal but that was something best left unvoiced for now. For now I would hedge my bets. 

“But not impossible,” Simon persisted. “Seriously, though, could a necromancer be born in a human family? Is that possible?”

This was really bothering him, I realized. I turned onto my side to study him. It was dark but not so dark that I couldn’t see him properly. Really good night vision was part of the package, along with my other... abnormalities. My brother lay on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, frowning up at the ceiling.

And then and there the idea that had been percolating in the back of my mind all afternoon coalesced into a definite plan of action.

Simon had to get out of here. That was my first and foremost priority. No matter what, he _had_ to get out. So far he was refusing point blank to leave me behind... but what if there was someone else’s fate hanging in the balance? What if it wasn’t just him and me?

It probably wouldn't take much to convince him to see “cute” little Chloe as a damsel in distress and any girl with half a brain wouldn't object to his attentions. She’d certainly seemed to be flattered by them at lunch. It was perfect. Besides, if she really was a necromancer than she really was in trouble. Necros were one of the more unstable of the races because of what they saw. Without help and support, they sometimes couldn’t cope at all and really did lose their minds. So, if she was one she needed help and I had no doubt that Dad could get her that help.

And if she wasn't... Damn, I needed to get to her file as soon as I could. 

Although, if I were being honest, all that really mattered was whether I could make Simon believe she was a necro. The rest was just gravy.

I had to answer carefully. I wasn’t the type to jump to conclusions, I wanted solid evidence of things. It was why Simon was honestly asking me about this. He knew he did have a tendency to jump to conclusions and so he honestly wanted my more considered opinion. I needed to think about exactly what I said and how I said it. If I was too supportive of the idea of Chloe being a necromancer right away Simon would wonder why. On the other hand, as we both knew that I knew more about other supernatural races than he did, if I was too dismissive he might come to the conclusion that she wasn’t and leave it at that.

So, when I answered my words were well considered.

“Like I said before, if a necro marries a human the kid may or may not be a supernatural. However, even if they weren’t they’d still carry the genetic code. If, a generation or two later, they married someone who also carried the correct genetics it’s not impossible for them to have a supernatural kid. It’s like red hair. Both parents have to carry the genes for it but neither actually has to display the trait to have a red headed kid.”

I was fairly sure I was right. No, I didn’t have any kind of detailed knowledge of the genetics involved in necromantic traits. As far as I knew no one did. Still, from what I did know of genetics in general and necromancers in particular, it was a reasonable hypothesis.

“The real problem,” I continued, “is that necromancy isn’t like being a sorcerer or a witch or something. If you choose not to cast a spell it’s easy to pass for human. I’ve read that necromancers can’t always tell whether the person they’re looking at a ghost or a living person. It’s like my strength. I can try to hide it but sometimes it’s not that easy.”

Simon’s frown deepened, even as he nodded slightly. “And if you break a table everyone thinks that you must have been trying _really_ hard so they think you have a problem. Instead of just making a mistake because you’re not used to being so strong yet.”

He was referring to the time I’d cracked our coffee table right down the middle because I slapped my hand on it too hard during a card game. That unfortunate incident had been witnessed by a business associate of Dad’s who wasn’t a supernatural. Ever after that he’d always looked at me like he was expecting me to attack him. I’d been particularly grateful when we’d next moved on.

“Exactly,” I answered. “I think it would be the same with necromancy. She wouldn’t be able to hide that she’s seeing things. Mental illness would seem to be the only logical explanation. Not to say that she isn’t mentally ill. Mental illness is a lot more common than necromancy. Still...” I let the word hang.

He turned onto his side as well, squinting at me in the dark. “What would they have to do to get a necromancer to stop seeing the dead?”

That was a thought I hadn’t had yet. A disconcerting one. “I don’t think they can, at least not reliably and safely.” This, at least, I was pretty certain about.

Simon didn’t answer.

I still didn't know if the new girl really was a necromancer and just for that moment, I didn't care. I left the question where it was and settled down to wait for Simon to fall asleep. I’d seen the honest concern in Simon’s eyes and if Chloe could be my catalyst, then that was all that mattered.


	5. Chapter 4: Only Two Ways Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I did as I had done for the last three months – channeled my fear for Dad into trying to get Simon out of here. At least now, I had a viable plan..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm SO sorry about the delay in getting this chapter out. We're moving right now. God I'd forgotten how much I HATE moving. Monday was the day that the moving truck actually turned up. Eleven hours of hauling future tends to make one forget about everything else. 
> 
> Next week we'll be back to our regular Monday chapter postings.
> 
> *starts searching dusty corners for stray feedback*

  
**~ Chapter 4 ~**  
Only Two Ways Out

 

Later that night, long after everyone else was asleep, I snuck into Gill’s office to get a look at Chloe’s file. What I found was promising.

Chloe Saunders was fifteen and in the ninth grade at A. R. Gurney School of the Arts. No history of any kind of mental illness. No history of any kind of trouble at all. She’d had some counseling after her mother was killed in a car accident when she was a kid but there had been no signs then of anything other than the natural grief and confusion one would expect in that situation. 

Prior to two days ago, all the signs pointed to a reasonably well adjusted teenager.

Then she’d begun her period for the first time. Fifteen was pretty late to start but not unheard of and it fit with her overall appearance as a late bloomer. However, that’s where things got strange. She’d proceeded to flip out, believing that she was being chased by a partially melted guy in a janitorial uniform. The whole thing had happened at her school, so the teachers had called for an ambulance to come get her, assuming she was having some kind of breakdown.

This was looking better and better. Supernatural powers were often effected by stress and hormones and most didn't fully ripen until puberty at the earliest. It was possible that she'd either been able to ignore what little she’d seen up until that point or it was only at that point that her abilities really kicked in. I knew that the onset of her first period changed everything for a witch, it was when she could finally come into her full power. And Simon had rarely been able to successfully cast spells at all until he was twelve which wasn’t an usual age for a sorcerer to begin his training. I’d been an apparently normal kid until puberty had kicked in, as well, activating all the changes I’d been going through and would continue to go through for some years yet. While I didn’t know for certain that necromancers were the same, I would have very surprised if they weren’t at least similar.

No, none of this was absolute proof that Chloe Saunders was a necromancer but it sounded a hell of a lot more likely to me than schizophrenia, which was what she'd been diagnosed with.

I’d done a project on dopamine receptors not long before everything in our lives had gone to hell and had read up on schizophrenia a bit at the time. So, I did know a bit about it. While some of them did have visual and auditory hallucinations they didn’t try to deny them. They honestly believed they were real. So, Chloe’s constant denials that ghosts existed didn’t fit. If she was schizophrenic she’d be more likely to think we were the crazy ones for not seeing what was apparently right in front of us.

It also fit her fear better. While paranoia was often a part of schizophrenia, Chloe wasn’t scared of the living, not even of me. In fact, she seemed calmer when with people. Look at how she’d opened up to Simon at lunch or the friendly way she’d seemed to be getting on with Rachelle later that afternoon. She wasn’t paranoid. Whatever frightened her was unrelated to the people around her and apparently invisible to them. Things she tried to pretend she didn’t see, tried to convince herself weren’t real.

Lastly, there were no other symptoms. Despite her occasional stutter, there were no signs of disordered speech and there was certainly no sign of a blunting of emotions, even less of an inability or lack of desire to connect with others. Quite the opposite in fact.

Was this a perfect diagnosis? Hell no. Somehow, though, by the time I got back to my room and had thought about it for a while, I was no longer uncertain. It just all fit so much better.

And if I was wrong... If I was wrong it would end up being an honest mistake that Dad could sort out when we found him. But I didn’t think I was wrong.

What mattered now was that despite the chances against it, it looked as though we had managed to find another supernatural.

This really couldn’t have been better if I’d planned it. Chloe Saunders was going to turn out to be the answer to all my hopes if only I could play it right. All I had to do was convince Simon that she was in danger. Simon had always had an inner knight-in-shining-armor and he already had a thing for “cute” little Chloe.

Make it imperative for the sake of her sanity that he get out of here and find Dad and I had no doubt that he’d do whatever it took to help her, even if it meant leaving me behind.

 

*** * ***

 

Simon had been fast asleep and snoring softly when I got back to our shared room. He'd be pissed at me tomorrow for breaking into Gill’s office without him, but it had been safer going on my own. I might be big but because of what I was I could move faster and a lot quieter than Simon could. Besides, if I got caught, which wasn’t likely seeing as I’d be able to hear them a long time before they could hear me, I’d rather it be me alone who was in trouble.

I'd been back in bed for maybe forty minutes and had just been finally dozing off when bangs, thuds, and the shattering of glass came from the girl's side of the upstairs. I sat bolt upright but couldn't hear any shouting from over there. If there had been I was pretty sure I’d be able to hear it, though I doubted I’d be able to make out any words. I did hear Miss Van Dop, the other nurse, rush from her room on our side through the connecting door into Talbot's room on the girl's side. That door was the only connection between the two sides of the upstairs.

"What...?" Simon muttered sleepily, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes.

"No idea," I answered, heading out into the hall. Van Dop's door was closed and while I could just make out voices now that the commotion had stopped, they were speaking to quietly for me to make out what was being said.

"What's happening?" Simon asked from behind me.

I just shook my head as Peter stumbled out of his room looking confused. There was more talking, someone went downstairs – no, two someones. About fifteen minutes later Talbot was letting EMTs in the front door. We watched from the top of our stairs and could just see them as they came through below.

"We have her sedated," Talbot was saying.

"Should we take her to the county...?" one of them began.

"No, certainly not. We want her taken to a private clinic. We’ve called ahead and they are expecting her.”

"I bet it's Liz," Peter murmured. "She was freaking out this afternoon after that whole thing with Mrs. Wang."

"Could be," I agreed. Peter could be perceptive enough when he bothered to pay attention. I hadn't been in the school room to see that afternoon’s drama but I'd heard it clearly. Liz had apparently thrown a pencil at Wang, the teacher who came every day to help us with our school work, and then gone nuts insisting that she hadn't thrown it at all. She’d been on the edge for a while. She was here because had a history of becoming upset, throwing or breaking things and then _really_ freaking out, claiming that she hadn’t been the one to do it. She kept insisting, at least when she thought only Tori could hear, that she was being haunted by a poltergeist and it was what kept doing all these things. 

If anyone here was going to snap, Liz did seem the most likely candidate. At least, I hoped it was Liz. Neither Victoria nor Rachelle were the types to snap, at least not in a way that would lead to breaking things in the middle of the night. So, that only left Chloe and I couldn't afford to have her transferred.

I strained my ears for sounds as the EMTs collected someone and carried them down the stairs. Simon glanced at me once or twice, asking silently whether I heard anything that could tell us what was happening. I just shook my head.

Finally, the stretcher was wheeled past and I managed not to audibly sigh with relief as I got a good look at its deeply unconscious inhabitant.

“It’s Liz,” I confirmed quietly. Van Dop was right behind the EMTs and while Talbot hadn't noticed us, she did.

"Back to bed, now," she ordered. We went.

"There's only two rooms over on the girl's side, right?" Simon asked, sitting down on his bed.

"Yeah." He knew I'd been over every inch of this place.

"And I know Rae is stuck sharing with Tori, so Chloe must be sharing with Liz."

I just flopped down on my bed, waiting for him to get to his point.

Simon frowned. "I know it's unlikely but it is _possible_ that Liz really was being haunted by a poltergeist."

Back to this again. I rolled my eyes. This wasn't something I knew a great deal about but I knew enough to feel certain that Liz was simply disturbed. Yes, there was a kind of ghost that could move things but they were very rare. The chances of one attaching itself to some random teenager, especially a human one, were pretty damn remote.

Soft-hearted Simon, however, had worried about it ever since the incident when a book had flown across the media room when Rachelle and Victoria had been arguing. Liz had been blamed for it and as usual she'd sworn she hadn't done it. That time though Brady, another boy who’d been transferred out of here a few weeks ago, had seen the whole thing and he'd insisted that it had come off the table on its own, that Liz hadn't touched it. Not that the nurses listened, of course. That kind of thing just didn't happen in the “real” world. For once, I was unequivocally on the nurses’ side. Brady had been a pain in the ass who’d insisted there was nothing wrong with him and generally made trouble for everyone. It had been a relief when the doctors agreed that he was too difficult a patient for this place and sent him to a real hospital. The thing was that it would have been just like him to say that simply to stir up trouble.

"I was thinking," Simon continued. "If she really did have a poltergeist attached to her what would it do if it saw a necromancer?"

That caught my attention. A poltergeist and a necromancer in the same room...

"I don't know," I answered finally. "Same as any ghost I guess, try to talk to her."

Simon frowned. "But Chloe isn't admitting she sees ghosts, so if she is a necromancer and is confronted by a ghost but refuses to pay any attention to it.... _And_ that ghost has the ability to move stuff around and is desperate to get her attention..." He trailed off.

Okay, that kind of made sense. "I heard Liz tell Tori that Chloe was pretty drugged up when she got here," he continued. "She slept all afternoon and only woke up this morning. Maybe this was the ghost's first good look at Chloe or the first opportunity it had to try and talk to her or something."

"We don't actually know that she’s a necromancer," I cautioned, seeing that Simon was getting carried away with his theory. It did make a kind of sense but Liz had been pretty freaked out this afternoon and it was equally possible – and rather more likely – that she was just a screwed up teenager and something had finally snapped in her head.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "I wonder if we can get Chloe to talk about what happened tonight."

I shrugged. "You can try but don't push too hard. She's going to need our help and getting her back up at this point will only make things worse."

Simon looked surprised. "Our help?"

I filled him on what I'd read in her file as well as what had happened in the basement. As I'd anticipated he was annoyed at being left behind but let it drop after only a token complaint. He was too interested in what I had to say.

“So, you really do think that Chloe’s an actual necromancer?” he asked when I was done. He’d been carried away by his own theory only moments before but he knew that I didn’t come to decisions like this without what I felt to be solid evidence.

“I think it’s a distinct possibility,” I answered. “Far more likely than schizophrenia at any rate.” In all honesty the logical part of my brain was insisting that I was really only about eighty percent sure but I wasn’t admitting that to Simon. My plan hinged on his believing it.

"Okay, look,” he said. “Let _me_ try talking to her. I know you mean well, but you can be a bit..."

I snorted. "She basically told me to fuck off this afternoon, she isn't scared of me."

Simon’s eyebrows went up and he grinned. “Really?”

“Yes really.”

The glow of amused admiration in Simon’s eyes was enough to tell me that everything was going according to plan in that area as well. A girl not backing down from me was a girl with spirit, an attribute Simon appreciated.

 

*** * ***

 

During our morning break period the next day we caught up to Chloe as she was entering the kitchen. She'd been quiet and distracted all morning and I'd caught Simon glancing her way with concern more than once.

"Hey," Simon said, catching up to her. "You okay? You seem quiet this morning."

"I'm always quiet," she said with a little smile.

"Yeah, but after last night, you have an excuse. Probably didn't get much sleep, huh?"

She just shrugged.

Simon reached for the kitchen door and I reached over them to grab it. For once, Chloe didn't jump, just mumbled a good morning in my direction, like she was getting used to me just looming up out of nowhere. I found it rather amusing in spite of myself.

Simon headed directly for the pantry but I stayed in the kitchen. Chloe did seem paler and a bit more listless today than yesterday. On the other hand, that didn't necessarily mean anything. Her sleep had been severely disturbed last night no matter whether it was by supernatural means or not.

"What?" she demanded after a moment, clearly annoyed that I was looking at her. People could be so weird about the stupidest things. I reached for the fruit bowl beside her and she stumbled back as though she thought I was about to attack her. She realized what I was after and moved away quickly with a muttered “sorry." So much for not being jumpy around me anymore.

I hated all the playing around and not coming to the point that people did so much of. I was good at planning long term strategies and playing them out over days or even weeks. However, in the immediate sense of actually talking to people I had a tendency to be impatient. Since Simon wasn’t exactly hurrying to get this underway I started the conversation myself as a grabbed a couple of apples.

"So what happened last night?"

"Hap-p-p-?"

I decided that even if someone could teach Chloe how to lie better, it wouldn't make a much of a difference. As soon as she got nervous, she started stuttering. It was like a built in lie detector.

“Slow down,” I told her.

Her face went red, clearly both embarrassed and angry that I dared to acknowledge her speech impediment. Whatever.

Simon stepped from the pantry, a box of granola bars in hand.

I frowned. He wasn't eating right, again. Those granola bars were incredibly high in carbs and he hadn't had nearly enough protein at breakfast to balance that kind of intake. Simon did his best to hide it, like it was something to be embarrassed about, but whether he liked it or not he had Type One Diabetes and that wasn’t something to play around with. 

"You should have an apple," I told him. "That's not –"

"I'm good, bro." He flipped a granola bar to me with a look that told me to drop it. I swallowed back the words only because we weren’t alone. Why he felt being diabetic was something he had to hide I didn’t know but he’d always been really sensitive about it, to the point of going out of his way to make sure no one knew. He’d be seriously pissed if I said anything in front of Chloe to make her guess. I’d just have to make sure he got enough protein at lunch.

Simon held the box out to Chloe who grabbed two bars with a mumbled thanks and turned for the door.

"Might help if you talk about it," Simon called after her.

She turned back, looking at Simon uncertainly while he attempted to look casual; entirely focused on opening his granola bar. I watched her expression carefully as I leaned back against the counter, starting on my apple.

"Well?" I demanded finally when she just stood there. It was a mistake. I could tell as soon as I’d said it and her expression hardened.

"Rae's waiting for me," she said in a tone that told us exactly where we ranked before turning to leave again. Simon went to stop her but I shot him a warning look. I couldn't have him risking her good opinion of him. She'd have to open up to him at some point for this whole thing to work. Pushing now wouldn’t be at all conducive to that.

"Something happened," he whispered to me as the door closed behind her.

Duh, they'd taken Liz away on a stretcher. "Yeah," I answered. "You're probably right. Think it matters though?"

"I don't know," Simon sighed. "Maybe we shouldn't pry. Liz could have just freaked out. There are actual emotionally disturbed teens here. I mean, look at Tori."

"True." I shrugged. "But does Chloe seem 'disturbed' to you?"

"No," he said glumly. "Just scared."

I took another bite of my apple, satisfied with my small victory.

 

*** * ***

 

As if to drive home the fact that there were only two ways out of this place if you played by their rules, that turned out to be the day Peter's parent's came to take him home. He was “cured” apparently – though he’d never seemed all that disturbed to me to begin with – and so we all got cake.

I was reminded suddenly of when I was little. The seemingly arbitrary way the nurses would declare that it was someone’s birthday and produce cake for us to celebrate. None of us had ever understood why they’d done it or what a birthday even was. This was too much like that in some ways. A cake produced to celebrate something, as if something so trivial could make it a happy event for us.

I tried not to watch Peter with his parents as we had our little party. I didn't want to think about where Dad might be. I had to believe he was alive, the alternative was... I just _had_ to believe he was. The indisputable truth, though, was that he hadn't come for us and the only way he wouldn’t come for us was if he couldn’t. A fact that scared me more every day.

So, I did as I had done for the last three months – channeled my fear for Dad into trying to get Simon out of here. At least now, I had a viable plan in our helpless little necro. I watched Chloe carefully and wondered how to bring up the subject of ghosts again without having her run for the hills or blow me off.

I had a lucky break that afternoon, or at least I thought so at the time. Due to the fact that I was already working on collage level math I was sent into the dining room to work on it while Wang gave lessons to the others. I finished my math early that day and found Chloe alone in the media room, focused entirely on the computer. Her school hadn’t sent over her work yet so there was no point in having her sit in class with the others with nothing to do.

Crossing the room, I looked over her shoulder to see what held her rapt attention. The web browser was open to an article about a janitor who died at her school years before in a chemical explosion; the kind that would definitely have left the guy looking melted. Hadn’t she freaked out at her school, shouting about being chased by some guy who was melted?

Now, Chloe sat staring at the picture attached to the article with a look of mingled fear and disbelief. Seems she wasn't as much of a blonde as I'd taken her for. She herself wasn’t so sure of her diagnosis, unsure enough to do a little investigation and if that was leading her to actual dead people…

She was so perfect it could almost lead me to believe in a higher power that had listened to all my not quite prayers over the last few months.

Not actual prayers, of course. If I’d been raised to be in the least bit religious, I would have been praying. Problem was that I was an atheist and even if I hadn’t been I doubted anything divine would listen to someone like me. The fact is that you can’t grow up as a supernatural without being aware that there was a life after death. Still, some benevolent creator who listed to prayers? No, that one is too far-fetched, even for someone with super-strength who had been raised by a sorcerer.

If I had believed in a God, though, I’d have been giving thanks at this moment.

Time to give Chloe a push in the right direction.

"Is that who you saw?" She jumped about a foot in the air, spinning around in her chair to stare up at me.

Ignoring her perpetual jumpiness, I pointed to the article. "A. R. Gurney. That's your school. You saw that guy, didn't you?'

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said stiffly. The hand that quickly closed the browser window trembled ever so slightly. "I was doing schoolwork. For when I go back. A project."

As pathetic excuses went, that was pretty pathetic. "On what? 'People who died at my school'? You know, I always heard art schools were weird..."

"Weird?" she demanded, clearly ticked off. I'd hit a sore spot it seemed. Time to switch tactics.

"You want something to research?" I leaned over her to grab the mouse and her nose wrinkled a little as she tried to shift away a little. I glared at her. Like I needed reminding that I wasn't daisy fresh.

Puberty was a bitch for everyone but I didn’t know anyone who had seemed to have as many problems as I did. I showered twice a day and my hair was _still_ always a greasy mess. I had acne like you wouldn’t believe and no matter how much deodorant I used, I always seemed to smell.

I wasn't perfect but dammit I was _trying_. Not that effort ever seemed to count much where girls were concerned. At least, not from what I’d observed. All that mattered with them was results. One of the many reasons I’d never had any time for them.

I didn’t know why Chloe’s very subtle attempt to avoid the smell bothered me more than Victoria’s loudest comments about shampoo and acne creams but it did. Possibly because Chloe wasn’t anything like as obnoxious and I was actually trying to help her. Okay, it was for my own ends but still, you’d think that that would count for something.

I pulled in my elbows a little as I opened the browser again and typed 'Necromancer' into the search engine. 

"Try that,” I said, clicking ‘search’. “Maybe you'll learn something."


	6. Chapter 5: Dangerous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This was why I was here. It was why I couldn't leave with Simon no matter how much he begged and argued and pleaded."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my lovelies. I hope people are reading and enjoying. Happy Memorial Day to those in the US. Hope your weather is even half as beautiful as ours is here. Now if only I had the day off to enjoy said weather. 
> 
> Damn I'd forgotten how much damn WORK moving is. Tired. SO ready for this to be over.
> 
> *keeps refreshing her page in case of feedback*

  
**~ Chapter 5 ~**  
Dangerous

 

I gave her the rest of the day to mull it over. Chloe was even quieter at dinner that night than she'd been the night before and she seemed distracted. Even Tori's zombie act from whatever she’d been doped up with this time and the efforts of the others to get her to respond to something – anything – wasn't enough to keep her attention. She kept staring off into space with a worried, preoccupied look at her face.

Hopefully, she was thinking about what she'd read, putting the pieces together. If she was smart, the answer was obvious. Actually, if she was anything but brain dead the answer was obvious.

Still, I had to remind myself that she hadn’t been raised with the knowledge that things like ghosts and necromancers existed. To be charitable, it would be a stretch for a person who'd grown up in the human world to accept the truth. However, I didn’t have the time or inclination to be charitable.

I wrote a quick note asking her to meet me at 7:15 in the basement and signed it 'Simon'. No girl would willingly meet up with me even if their life depended on it. Simon, however, would have them lining up to meet privately with him. I left it on the floor in her room and crossed my fingers – metaphorically speaking anyway.

My luck held, she was already there when I came down the stairs at ten after. She stood with her back to the door, staring into the room, stock-still before jumping about ten feet when she spotted my shadow on the floor. She spun around looking like she was expecting to see a monster behind her.

"You always this jumpy?" It wasn't like I'd actually been trying to sneak up on her. I'd deliberately made plenty of noise coming down the stairs just so that this wouldn’t happen. Seemed my efforts had been wasted.

"Wh-where did you come from?"

_The moon. Where do you think?_

"Upstairs," was all I said.

"I'm waiting for some –" She froze and I watched the penny drop. "It's you, isn't it? You had Simon send –"

"Simon didn't send anything," I told her, not wanting her angry at him if this went to shit. "I knew you wouldn't come for me. But Simon?" I looked pointedly at my watch. "For Simon, you're early."

So typical. For once, though, I wasn’t annoyed by the fact. For once a girl’s interest in Simon actually played into my plans.

"So, did you look it up?"

She looked annoyed. "You mean that word? Nec – Necromancer? Is that how you say it?"

I waved the pronunciation away. "Did you look it up?"

"I did. And, well, I don't quite know what to say."

She seemed serious, at least. Hopefully that was a good sign. Unlike most of the others here, Chloe seemed reasonably intelligent. If she was willing to take things seriously then that would make this all that much easier. I tried to act casual but for once I wasn’t entirely sure my own eagerness didn’t show through.

I needed this girl. This plan had to work, for her sake as much as Simon's and Dad's. The sooner she accepted what she was the sooner I could start working on Simon to get out. He wouldn't do it for his own sake when it meant leaving me behind but I was betting everything on the fact that he'd do it for Chloe's big blue eyes.

"Okay. So, you searched for it and..."

"It wasn't what I expected,” she said.

Expected? What had she expected she was when she realized that that janitor she’d seen actually had died in her school? The next logical step from realizing that the guy she saw really had been a ghost was to realize that she had special abilities.

"So..." I was unable to keep from leaning forward, just a bit.

"Well, I have to admit... I'm not really into computer games."

_What?!_

"Computer games?" I found myself echoing. What the hell was she on about?

"Video games? RPGs?” Chloe clarified. “I've played some but not the kind you're talking about."

For once in my life, my mind totally blanked. I honestly had no idea what she was talking about. What did computer games have to do with the ghost she saw?

"But if you guys are into them," she continued, flashing me a bright smile. "Then I'm certainly willing to give them a shot."

"Them?"

"The games. Role playing, right? But I don't think the necromancer is for me, though, I do appreciate the suggestion."

"Suggestion..." I wasn't often caught so completely off-guard and I didn't like it. She seemed totally serious and with my brain full of danger and escapes and life-and-death choices, she seemed to be making no sense at all. 

"That I play a necromancer? That's why you had me look it up, right?"

It finally clicked and I was seriously annoyed at having taken so long to catch on. She must think I was slow or something. One of those sites the search engine had popped up with must have been about a game with necromancers in it, there were enough of them. So, she thought that _that_ was what I was talking about.

Damn, damn, _damn_. Why hadn’t I stuck around long enough to make sure that google had spit out the right kind of results?

"No, I didn't mean –" I started.

"I suppose it could be cool," she continued blithely, as if I hadn't spoken. "Playing a character who can raise the dead but it's just, you know, not really me. A little too dark. Too emo, you know? I'd rather play a magician."

"I wasn't –" I tried again, but it didn’t seem she was going to let me get a word in edgewise. See, this was another of the reasons I didn’t get girls. They went off on tangents that made no sense and then wouldn’t stop.

"So I don't have to be a necromancer? Thanks. I really do appreciate you taking the time to make me feel welcome. It's so sweet." She beamed at me with what had suddenly become blatantly false cheer.

She knew, I realized. She knew _exactly_ what was going on and was screwing with me just for the hell of it!

"I wasn't inviting you to a game, Chloe,” I nearly growled. I began running through every mental calming technique Gill had taught me as I felt my temper boiling to the surface.

"No?" She widened her eyes with false innocence. "Then why would you send me to those sites about necromancers? Show me pictures of madmen raising armies of rotting zombies? Is that how you get your kicks, Derek? Scaring the new kids? Well, you've had your fun, and if you corner me again or lure me into the basement –"

"Lure you?" Yeah, like she was so hard to get down here. All I had to do was dangle the possibility of time alone with Simon in front of her. I probably wouldn't have been able to keep her away if I'd tried. "I was trying to talk to you,” I told her.

"No," she said firmly, looking at me like I was something she’d found stuck to the bottom of her shoe. "You were trying to scare me. Do it again and I'll tell the nurses."

Suddenly, I was pissed. Beyond pissed.

No different. She was just like every other girl – every other _person_ – I'd ever met. Whatever I do, it _has_ to be for the worst possible reasons. It wasn't that I didn't know what I was, that I was dangerous. A monster. They didn't, though, and dammit I was _trying_. I hadn't done a thing to her, I hadn't done anything to anyone in this house. I'd been the perfect patient since I got here. I never talked back to the nurses, did everything the doctors suggested. I kept to myself and caused no trouble.

It didn’t matter, though. None of it mattered. I looked the part so I was the bad guy.

Chloe had no intention of listening to anything I had to say. She wasn't even going to give me the chance to explain why I wanted to talk to her. She'd already decided what kind of a person I was based on no evidence whatsoever, except maybe the fact that I was lacking in good looks and social graces. Now, if I came near her again she'd go running to grownups because the big, nasty brute was bothering her. And they’d believe her too. I knew they would. They couldn’t afford not to. No matter how good I was, no matter how hard I tried, it didn’t matter.

As she passed me on her way to the stairs I grabbed her arm, determined to make her stay, make her listen. She was in trouble whether she knew it or not and Simon and Dad _needed_ her. This wasn't some game. It was too important for me to allow her to just walk away from it like this!

She cried out as I pulled her back and I let go in surprise. She flew backwards away from me, landing hard a few feet away.

My breath stopped. The anger gone as quickly as it had come.

For a moment, a heartbeat, Chloe lay still and I stood there, frozen in shocked horror.

No. Please, no. _Please._ Not again. I hadn't done this _again_.

Then she scrambled to her feet, pale and shaking. I reached out to help her but she stumbled back away from me, avoiding my touch like she would a vicious dog.

I hadn't been trying to hurt her, I'd just wanted her to listen to me. I’d just tried to stop her from getting past me, that was all. I hadn't meant... 

"Chloe, I... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."

She wasn't listening. She didn't even look at me as she ran for the stairs, all of her earlier bravado gone. This time scent she left in her wake was finally one of fear.

 

*** * ***

 

When I was little there had been four of us living in a hospital, sleeping in a locked room every night and never leaving the building except to go into a walled play area in the back. Mothers, fathers, schools, friends... these were things we only knew from books. As real to us as fairytales and just as likely from where we stood.

I knew now that everyone who had worked at the lab had been a supernatural. They’d mostly been sorcerers, witches, shamans and half-demons – the four most common races. Even then, though, the four of us had known that what we were was different. I remember whispers and sidelong glances, the knowledge that we were something they didn’t like, something they were afraid of.

They’d had reason to be afraid, as it turned out.

The other three had been far more aggressive and territorial than myself. I was the outcast, they snapped and snarled whenever I got too close. They were left to do as they pleased, even when they hurt me in the process of taking from me whatever it was I had that they decided they wanted. It was inevitable, I suppose, that they would eventually turn on one of those that watched over us. How could it not have happened? They didn’t know any better, had never been taught that violence wasn’t an acceptable way of getting what they wanted. It was the only way they knew and we were only children after all.

The night they’d attacked the nurse, I nearly screamed myself horse calling for help. Looking back now, I probably saved the woman’s life.

I never saw the other three boys again.

A new words entered the whispers around me then, like _mistake_ and _problem_. But most of all, _dangerous_.

It was less than a week later that Dad had taken me away from there. He’d believed I wasn’t dangerous, that I’d be no different from any other child if given the chance.

Ten years later, I’d proved him wrong.

This was why I was here. It was why I couldn't leave with Simon no matter how much he begged and argued and pleaded. My temper wasn't under my control, not completely. And with my strength, with what I could do to someone without even trying... what I _had_ done to people without even realizing what I was doing...

I had hoped I was getting better. All the therapy and anger management training, all the pills and all the work. I'd been trying so hard... And then I went and hurt a girl who didn't even come up to my collarbone simply because she didn't see anything different than anyone else when she looked at me.

I wanted to be sick.

I’d just wanted to stop her walking past me, get her to listen to me. But that was an excuse and no excuse was acceptable. I’d learned that in my sessions with Gill. Too bad I hadn’t learned enough for no excuse to be necessary.

I'd be transferred tomorrow, maybe even tonight. There was no way they'd let me stay after this. 

Maybe that would be a good thing. Maybe they'd put me someplace where I wouldn't be able to hurt anyone else. I wasn't getting better, that much was obvious. I was still too dangerous to be let out of here and even here I wasn't safe.

Maybe when I was gone Simon would finally leave. I just hoped he could manage the escape plan I’d figured out without my help and that he would try to find Dad, help him, instead of coming after me, as though I needed rescuing. As though I deserved rescuing.

I hadn't even wanted to scare her. I'd been trying to help, I really had. Yes, I needed her to finally get Simon to leave but the whole plan hinged on the fact that she needed the help Dad could get her.

I was shaking by the time I got up to our room, my breath coming fast, as near to absolute panic as I had ever been in my life. Simon took one look at me and dropped his school book.

"Bro, what...?" I shook my head, refusing to meet his eyes and feeling bile rise up inside along with the shame. He was always worried about _me_ when _I_ was the monster here. I wondered what he'd think when he found out that I'd hurt a girl he liked, threw her around like a rag doll. The image wouldn’t stop repeating in my head. Seeing her fly back away from me…

"Hey," Simon planted himself in front of me while I paced, grabbing my arm as I’d grabbed Chloe’s less than a half an hour ago. There wasn’t any pain, though, because Simon was a sorcerer, not a monster. I only stopped because he was in front of me, he couldn’t have held me in place. I sure as hell wasn’t about to try and push past him. What if I accidentally hurt him, too? I’d only tried to get her to stop and I’d thrown her halfway across the room. I couldn’t hide the shudder from him.

"What happened?” he demanded, clearly frightened now. “Are you okay?"

"No," I said, pulling away as carefully as I could. "I'm not okay. You were right, you should have been the one to explain things to Chloe. I was trying to talk to her, get her to realize what she is and... I screwed up."

"Screwed up how?" he asked, his voice tight. I didn't look at his face, not wanting to see whatever expression was there. " _What happened?_ " he demanded when I didn't answer.

"I just screwed up, okay."

I didn't want to talk about it. I grabbed my towel and headed for the bathroom to get away from the questions. Simon tried to follow me but I shut the bathroom door in his face and locked it for good measure.

I couldn’t tell him, couldn’t face that. Turned out I a coward along with all the rest, but at this point who the hell cared? Besides, he'd hear about it soon enough after Chloe got done telling the nurses what had happened.

It wasn’t just, or even mostly, that he’d be pissed at me. It was that he’d never seen me for the danger I was before. I was his brother and he saw me as a person, just as Dad always had. Now, though... Would he finally see me for what I was? The guy I’d hurt before had pulled on knife on him, so Simon could justify my actions to himself because I'd been protecting him. But even Simon couldn't find a way to justify this. As much as I wanted him to accept that I was exactly where I should be, I suddenly found the idea of my brother looking at me the way most people did...

Bile rose in my throat again and this time I did throw up.

So much for my plan.

I could only hope that my transfer would get Simon moving and that wherever they sent me was someplace where I couldn’t hurt anyone else. Maybe they’d lock me up somewhere. Maybe that would be for the best.

It wasn't the failure of my plan that haunted me while I showered, though. It was the scent of fear Chloe had left behind her as she’d run. She'd stood up to me, told me what she thought of me, refused to be intimidated. I had started to respect her for it. So, what had I done – I'd shown her exactly _why_ she should be afraid of me. Why everyone should be afraid of me.

Dad had always insisted that it was simply because my kind were so rare and reclusive that the few supernaturals we did know sometimes acted strangely around me. It was just that I was the only one of my kind they’d ever seen or would ever be likely to see. No matter what he said, though, part of me had known it was because I was different. That I was as unnatural to other supernaturals as they were to humans.

What I was... it wasn’t the same.

I never minded talking to Simon about his spells or about the ways in which sorcerer magic was different than witch magic or any other topic about supernaturals. Except one. I didn’t like talking about what I was. I didn’t even like even like _thinking_ about it. Dad talked to me about it, told me as much as he knew. However, all he’d had to go on was second or third-hand information, since myself and the other boys at the laboratory were the only ones of my kind he’d ever seen. Even most of the people he got his information from had never actually met one of us. Hell, it was other supernaturals that had kept four of us in a laboratory so they could monitor us, study us. I never forgot that. Even to other supernaturals we were things, animals to be caged and monitored, not children to be given homes or loved.

The fact was, other supernaturals didn’t associate with my kind. Dad said it was because those like me had cut themselves off from the rest of the supernatural community. I’d always wondered, though, if the desire for that cut hadn’t been mutual.

Simon’s magic had emerged with puberty just as Chloe’s abilities had. They were now what they always would be, a sorcerer and a necromancer. I’d changed with puberty, yes, becoming what I was now. Unlike them, however, my changes were far from done and the biggest one was yet to come. The idea of that final change terrified me. It always had. One day I really would be a monster, completely. In a few years I’d become the stuff of nightmares.

Even the word for what I was had always scared me because my kind were the creatures that frightened children in fairytales. Even the children of other supernaturals.

Werewolf.


	7. Chapter 6: Waiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There had always seemed to be an undercurrent of nerves and anxiety in Chloe’s scent. That had been nothing like this. This was solid fear, nearly thick enough in the air to choke me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this update is late again. Sorry about that. So much has been going on. I HATE MOVING!
> 
> Also, my beta has suffered a bereavement so I'm posting this chapter unbetaed. I didn't want to fall too far behind my promised Monday updates but she's got a lot of other things to worry about at the moment. I'll update with an edited chapter when she's up to it again.
> 
> FEEEEEEEEDBAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!

  
**~ Chapter 6 ~**  
Waiting

 

I stayed in our room after my shower, not even going down for our evening snack. I didn't want to risk running into Chloe and frankly I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t end up throwing up anything I tried to eat at this point.

Every sound made me tense, anticipating the nurses coming to get me or Gill to turn up or... well, _something_. But nothing happened. The evening progressed just like any other.

Simon was worried but he didn't push. One of the best things about him was that he knew when to back off and give me space. He snuck me up some crackers after he went down for snack but for once in my life I wasn't hungry. I managed to choke them down so as not to make him any more worried than he already was. Unfortunately, he could tell that my heart wasn’t in it which clearly worried him all the more. Thankfully they stayed down, though they didn’t seem particularly happy about it.

I pretended to read and ignored all my brother’s attempts to talk to me. When it all came out, he’d know until then I was going to stew in my cowardice.

Lights out seemed to take years to arrive and when it did I managed only a light doze, tossing and worrying.

I didn't think anything of it at first when I heard someone moving around downstairs. Midnight snack runs were pretty normal in a house full of teenagers. Then I heard the copy machine in the office below our room. Okay, that was _not_ a snack run.

I considered just letting it go. What did it matter when I was likely to be gone tomorrow anyway? It wasn’t in my nature not to check, though. Dad said that that too was probably part of what I was. Guarding the pack and all that. I had always hoped it was just me. The more I was just Derek and not a werewolf the happier I was.

By the time I got downstairs the office was closed and dark but a light was on in the kitchen. 

"Come on." It was Chloe's voice, sounding like a whisper except too loud. I knew she could be quiet when she wanted. This had been a stage whisper then, meant to be heard but just as clearly meant to be taken as stealth betrayed. "Just pick something already."

I nearly went straight back upstairs. The last thing I wanted to do was to see her again tonight. It was cowardly, though, and that fact that I’d already been a coward once tonight kept me moving.

"I can't find the Rice Krispie bars," Rae answered, in a voice which also had all the qualities of a whisper while carrying better than a shout. "I know there were some last week."

"The guys probably –" Chloe stopped. "Someone's coming. Get the light!" she hissed and the room went dark.

The kitchen was empty when I stepped inside, except for a couple of juice boxes on the counter. The pantry door, however, was ajar and when I looked at it Chloe pushed it open and stepped out as if she'd only been making sure I wasn't one of the nurses. I didn't buy it. It had to have been them I'd heard in the office and this was their cover in case anyone came down. It was a good cover as these things went. If I hadn’t already known they’d been in the office I might have bought it. I was pretty sure the nurses would have.

"Cracker?" She tilted the box to me, trying for a perky smile and a nonchalant manner. I just looked at her and the smile vanished, the fear back in her eyes. Her breathing hitched but only someone as abnormal as myself would have heard it. She shoved the box of crackers into my hand, moving away from me as quickly as she could.

"We were getting a snack," Rae informed me unnecessarily, flipping the light back on. Her look said that she knew something was up between Chloe and I and that she knew damn well who was to blame. I kept watching Chloe, trying to figure out why she would have told Rachelle but not the nurses. And why Rachelle hadn't insisted she tell the nurses after she knew what had happened. She must not know the whole story. Which again begged the question, why was Chloe keeping this to herself?

"I'll get the juice," Rae muttered as the silence stretched.

I glanced at the juice boxes as Rae picked them up and then back at Chloe. The setup was clever. A good way of hiding what they'd really been up to. Its only flaw was that it didn't take into account hearing as good as mine. But then, why should it?

As Chloe stepped hesitantly forward, wanting to get past me but clearly not wanting to get too close, it hit me. My file.

Chloe was smart, like I'd thought. Before she went running to the nurses she'd wanted to find out why I was here, whether I had a history of violent behavior. She didn't trust the nurses to believe her. She'd been diagnosed with schizophrenia after all. They might think she was hallucinating again or showing signs of paranoia, so she'd decided to do her homework first. She’d told Rachelle enough of what had happened to enlist her help and the two of them had planned this whole thing out.

For a moment I hesitated. I wanted to explain, to apologize.

As she neared me she froze, however, her breath catching again. She tensed ever so slightly, prey sensing a predator nearby and poised to run. There had always seemed to be an undercurrent of nerves and anxiety in her scent. That had been nothing like this. This was solid fear, nearly thick enough in the air to choke me.

I stepped aside.

Taking the sleeve of crackers from the box, I held it out to her as she passed. "Forgot these."

"Right. Thanks."

She didn't look at me as she grabbed it and fled into the hall. She knew I didn't buy her ruse, I was sure of that.

Following her out, Rachelle glanced at me, clearly uncertain whether I bought it or not but, knowing enough not to trust me.

On the way back up to my room I paused outside the door to Gill's office, smelling the lingering scents of Chloe's nervousness and Rachelle's excitement. I thought about my file in there and what Chloe would have read in it – confirmation that I was every bit the monster she thought me to be. No wonder she’d been so afraid in the kitchen.

In the end, I didn't sleep at all that night.

 

*** * ***

 

The next morning I seemed to remain in a kind of limbo. I went through the motions of a regular morning, knowing any moment that the facade had to shatter. Any moment all hell would break loose and I’d be at the heart of it.

Any moment.

So, I kept myself ready, waiting for something that kept not happening. I found myself lingering near Gill’s office instead of heading to breakfast, as though wanting to be on hand to get this over with as quickly as possible once Chloe told the nurses what had happened.

My mind was still whirling and so I wasn’t in the least interested when a visitor arrived. She was a women of average height, dressed nicely, somewhere in her late-30s or early-40s. I probably wouldn’t have even registered that much if she hadn’t addressed me.

“Hello.” She had that sound of forced cheerfulness that adults often had when attempting to sound friendly to teenagers they didn’t know and didn’t particularly care about. There was also something assessing in her eyes I didn’t particularly like, as if she were weighing me up and didn’t like what she was seeing. “Who are you then?”

I was _not_ up for this kind of thing, not today. Yes, it was rude to just turn and walk into the media room instead of answering and normally I did make the effort to be polite. On the other hand, I doubted that I’d be here long enough for it to matter if I was less than friendly with somebody’s mom.

I could hear Talbot behind me coming up to welcome the woman and to apologize for my behavior saying that I was ‘like that.’

Chloe was conspicuously absent when class started. When Simon asked about it, Rachelle told him that Chloe’s aunt had come to take her out to breakfast.

At first, I was certain that it was so she’d be out of the way when they told me I was being transferred. I could feel myself tensing, ready for what was to come.

But again... nothing happened.

Chloe came back from her breakfast and joined the rest of us in class as if everything was normal. I heard the woman from earlier asking to speak to Gill about Chloe's treatment but she only stayed ten minutes or so and still nothing happened.

All morning I waited, half-fearing and half-hoping that I would be transferred by nightfall. I didn't want to leave Simon but it would be best for everyone if I was somewhere where I was no longer a danger. Besides, there would be nothing to keep him here if I was gone. They might even transfer him to a more normal group or foster home, the kind of place he could just walk away from instead of having to break out. I’d spent most of the night convincing myself that this wasn’t such a bad thing. That my being transfered might just be the best solution at this point.

When I was _finally_ called in for an unscheduled special session with Gill just before lunch it was almost a relief. I'd just about convinced myself that my being transferred would be a good thing. While I wasn’t looking forward to the lecture I’d receive before I went, and certainly not for the disappointment I knew Gill would feel in me, I felt I was ready to go.

Gill looked sterner than usual but not as angry as I’d expected.

“I called you in because there has been some concerns expressed by the parents of other patients regarding your behavior,” she said, before I had even sat down. She and I both knew she meant Chloe's aunt's concerns about my behavior toward Chloe, so there was no need for her to spell it out. I found I was rather grateful for that much. The question was why she wasn’t laying into me. She wasn’t happy with me but there was little evidence of the anger or, worse, the disappointment I’d expected.

“I understand that it isn’t always easy for you to get on with the other residents. We’ve been working very hard on your ability to treat others with respect and consideration. You and I both know we’ve barely begun what will be a very long process for you, but you have to understand that because of your history we can’t accept any misbehavior on your part.”

I almost breathed out a sigh of relief. This wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I respected Gill and the thought of what she might say to me before my transfer had been the only part I’d still be actively dreading at this point. I probably deserved worse than I was getting — hell, I knew I did — but I wasn’t going to complain about not getting it.

I waited to find out where I was going.

“Due to that I can’t give you more than this single warning,” Gill continued. “If there are any more complaints about you of any kind you will be transferred immediately. I know that may seem harsh but in your case we simply cannot afford to be lenient. Is that understood?”

For a moment, I couldn’t answer, too stunned by the fact that I was being given a warning at all. It was clear that whatever Chloe had told the nurses or her aunt or whoever, it hadn’t been the whole story. Apparently, she’d simply said that I was bothering her, like she’d threatened to do, and that was all.

I couldn’t understand it. Why hadn’t she told them what I’d done? They’d have believed her, they couldn’t afford not to. What was she playing at?

“Derek?” Gill demanded.

“Yes.” It came out as little more than a croak and I cleared my throat. “Yes, I understand.”

She seemed to be waiting for something more from me and I looked away from her trying to think. For a moment I considered telling Gill everything myself. I was scared by what had happened, terrified that all the work we’d done had been for nothing. The words died unspoken, however, and it wasn’t just because of Simon. The fact was, I didn’t want Gill to be that disappointed in me, to know that I was failing in my therapy that badly. I wanted to keep working with her instead of going to someplace else and trying to get used to some new doctor I might not be able to relate to as well.

I forced myself to stop worrying about what Chloe was doing and why and focused on the here and now. 

Looking back at Gill I nodded. “I don’t just understand,” I told her. “I agree. I can’t be given the same kind of tolerance as someone less dangerous. You have to think of the safety of the other residents here first. I…” The words threatened to get stuck in my throat but I forced them out. “I know what I am. I’d never expect or want you to treat me as anything else.”

Gill sat back, nodding in approval. “Good. Now, while I have you here, let’s talk about a few things.”

After that, my session became very strange.

Gill suddenly launched into questions about how I felt about the other residents of Lyle House as a whole and individually. Normally I didn't mind my sessions. Gill knew I wasn't one for the touchy-feely stuff. That day, though, all she wanted to know was how I felt about everyone. Whether I liked them, whether I considered any of them friends, if I'd like to consider any of them my friends. We seemed to be going around and around on the same issues, just with different emphases placed on the questions.

It took me a while to catch on to what she was getting at and when I did it was all I could do to keep my jaw from dropping. She thought I _liked_ Chloe and was trying to get me to admit it.

When I thought about it in a purely academic sense it was a logical conclusion. Why else would a sixteen-year-old boy who didn't like anyone much start bothering a pretty fifteen-year-old girl? I'd kept my distance from all the other residences since I got here, clearly not interested in getting to know them on any level. Then Chloe arrives and within days she’s complaining that I won’t leave her alone, or whatever it was she told them about me.

It would have been funny if I’d been in the mood to find anything funny at that point.

And because life always works that way, the first person I saw when I finally got out of Gill's office _had_ to be Chloe; standing in the hall, waiting for the bathroom. She met my eyes only fleetingly and there was still fear in her gaze. I hated it.

I muttered a 'hi' under my breath but was spared anything more by Simon's exiting the bathroom.

"Whoops," he said, spotting the two of us. "Guess I'm hogging the bathroom again, causing lines." He’d been checking his blood sugar and giving himself his insulin shot before lunch. As usual though he was careful to tuck the small pouch with his supplies in it in his back pocket before Chloe could see it. I wanted to roll my eyes. It was just diabetes, for crying out loud. It’s not like it was contagious or some kind of embarrassing STD or something.

"Just Chloe," I muttered, grabbing the door and holding it open for her. She gave me an odd look but seemed relieved. It was as though she understood by my gesture that she didn't have to worry about my “bothering” her any more, which she didn’t.

I ignored the confused look Simon gave me at my uncharacteristically gentlemanly behavior and headed upstairs. I'd knew I'd regret it later but I just didn't think there was any way I could eat right now, especially not with Chloe at the same table.

"Hey, lunch is this way," Simon called after me.

"Start without me. I gotta get something from our room."

I hopped he'd take the hint that I wanted to be alone. He'd already given me my space the night before, though. I wasn't happy now but I was calm and therefore I didn't get far before he called for me to hold up as he followed me up the stairs.

He shut the door behind us when we got to our room. "Okay, what's going on? And no dodging this time, okay?"

"Chloe complained about me," I said, not looking at my brother. There was no point in trying to sugar coat this. "Not that Gill actually said so but she wasn't exactly trying to hide it either. She just said there had been 'concerns' raised by parents about my behavior toward other residents. One more complaint, about anything, and I'm gone."

"Shit! Bro, what the hell happened last night?"

"I scared her, okay. And now they all think I'm harassing her or something." There was no way in hell I was telling him why they thought I was harassing her, that was just too damn embarrassing.

I could hear the tightly controlled anger in Simon's voice when he answered. "That's bullshit. Like you'd ever do that. They should know by now that..."

"Whatever," I said, cutting him off before he could get far on that diatribe again. Great, I scare his girl, hurt her, and he _still_ won't see? I loved my brother, but there were times when I wanted to shake him for being so blind.

"Look, I'll talk to Chloe..."

"No!" I turned around and glared at him. "It's done, okay. Just leave it alone."

"I can explain..."

"Explain what? That I'm a freak? Just let it go. It's over, okay? I tried to help and I messed it up. Fine. Leave it." He opened his mouth to object again, but I didn't give him the chance. My fists clenched as I growled. "Leave. It."

Simon looked at me, met my eyes, and for a moment we just stood there. Unspoken words hanging in the air. He knew me, I knew him and by now we both knew this argument by heart.

We never used to fight. Oh sure, we had spats like any pair of siblings but I always remembered what it had been like before Dad had brought me home to live with them. I remembered how lucky I was to have them at all and I just could never stay angry at him long enough to really fight. So, Simon and I had bickered and annoyed each other and even occasionally argued, but we didn't fight. Not real fights, not the kind that hurt.

Everything was different now. Since I'd hurt that kid and Dad had disappeared... since we'd come here, we fought. Over and over and over again. Just the one fight but by now we'd had it a hundred times at least and could probably recite each other's lines. What was the point in having it again now?

I knew what I was but Simon wasn't going to believe it. He would defend me to the end, even against me, because I was his brother and that's all there was to it. I was dangerous, just like they'd always said back at the laboratory before Dad had said I wasn’t. Before he took me home and gave me the chance to prove I wasn’t. Instead, I’d let him down and proven that they’d been right all along.

There was nothing – _nothing_ – I could say to make Simon believe it, though. At that moment, I could almost have hated him for that.

"Go get some food," I said, carefully keeping my voice neutral. "You aren't being good enough about your blood sugar."

Simon took a deep breath. "Okay, so come on then."

His look told me clearly enough that he wasn't going without me and we both knew that I'd do whatever it took to keep him healthy. So, we headed down to lunch together.


	8. Chapter 7: Not Interested

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "In a way, it was actually a relief. After days of trying to play nice and having thrown back in my face again and again, it felt good to just let go and be a complete bastard, let all the anger and frustration that had been brewing out on someone else."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My prayers are with the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting and with their families. Someday, God willing, we will live in a world where who one loves isn't used as an excuse to hate and to kill. Someday we will stand as one - gay, straight, bi, asexual, trans and queer. On that day we will know that love is a gift, in whatever form it comes. A treasure beyond all price that nothing can ever diminish the value of.
> 
> Okay, so maybe I should give up on this whole posting every Monday thing and just move it to Tuesday, since that's what I seem to be doing lately. It'll try to get better about this. Still, only one day late!
> 
> Here, Feedback! Here Feedback!

  
**~ Chapter 7 ~**  
Not Interested

 

It wasn’t long after we’d finished cleaning up from lunch that I saw Simon duck out the back with an uncharacteristically grim expression on his face. I didn't know who was on the roster to take the trash out today but with a sinking feeling I decided I could probably guess.

Only the cart we used for hauling trash out to the shed was visible when I stepped out into the backyard. It would have been quiet if someone didn’t have my hearing. To me, their voices were clear from where they stood on the other side of the shed.

"I didn't tell the nurses any –"

Simon interrupted her, his voice tightly controlled. I could count on one hand the amount of times I'd heard him this angry. "Your aunt did, then." I could hear his fingers drumming against the side of the shed. "You know what I'm talking about. You told her, she told the nurses, then Dr. Gill took Derek into a special conference before lunch and warned him not to bother you. If he does, they're sending him away."

Damn, damn, damn, _damn!_ Couldn't he leave it alone, just this once? I considered simply going back inside the house. I didn't want to hear this.

"Wh-what?" Chloe demanded, the honest shock making her stutter.

"A word from you and he's gone. Transferred."

Why did he always do this? Always try to defend the indefensible just because I had done it? 

"He's been perfect since he got here,” Simon continued, no longer trying to hide how angry he was. “Now, all of a sudden, after one problem with you, he's put on notice. If he so much as looks at you funny, he's gone."

He was blaming _her_ for this? Was he out of his mind?

"I-I-I–" Her stammer was back which meant that she was well and truly upset now. I shook off my hesitation and headed toward the shed, determined to make him shut up before he got himself transferred.

"Something happened with you two last night, didn't it? Derek came upstairs completely freaked out. Said he was talking to you and screwed up. That's all he'd tell me."

As I glanced around the edge of the shed the change in Chloe's expression stopped me. There had been shock there, worry, maybe even some embarrassment. Then it disappeared as her chin lifted, anger taking over.

"It was hot at the restaurant," she said, her voice steady and even, without a hint of a stutter. "So I rolled up my sleeves."

"What?" That took Simon aback but I knew what she meant.

She pushed her left sleeve up. I knew what I’d see even before she’d done it and almost looked away. The bruises were dark and deep, looking almost black against her pallor. One bruise for each of my fingers. The sight of them turned my stomach.

I heard the soft intake of shocked breath from Simon.

"My aunt wanted to know what happened," Chloe continued evenly. "When I wouldn't tell her, she tricked me into admitting it was a boy. She met Derek this morning and he was rude, so she decided it had to be him. I never confirmed it. If he's in trouble, it is not my fault. I had every right to tell someone and I didn't."

_Why not?_ I wanted to demand. I really did not understand her silence. She'd seen my file, knew how dangerous I was. I'd already hurt her once, what was stopping me from doing it again?

"Okay, okay." Simon was shaken, that was clear. Shaken, but as stubborn and unbending in his unreasonable faith in me as always. "So he grabbed your arm. That's what it looks like, right? He just grabbed harder than he thought."

"He threw me across the room." There was no compromise in Chloe's voice.

There was a slight hitch to Simon's next breath. "But he didn't mean to," he insisted, his words coming out too quickly in his desperation. Anything – _anything_ – for me not to be the villain. "If you saw how freaked out he was last night, you'd know that."

"So that makes it okay? If I lose my temper and smack you, it's all right, because I didn't mean to, didn't plan to?"

"You don't understand. He just –"

"She's right," I said, stepping around the corner and stopping this before it went any farther.

Chloe shrank back. It was only a little and she caught herself quickly; stiffening her spine and meeting my gaze directly, trying to hide how afraid of me she really was. I hated it and hated even more that Simon had seen it. Her sleeve was still up and it took all my concentration not to stare at the bruises on her arm. Each one an accusation, confirmation in the light of day just how wrong Dad had been to take me away from the laboratory as a child.

I approached slowly, careful to kept Simon between us.

"I wanted to talk to you last night. When you tried to leave, I pulled you back and..."

"You threw me across the room."

"I didn't..." I stopped myself before I said anything more. I'd been furious with Simon for trying to defend me and now _I_ was going to start? No, I thought, looking into her eyes. Her anger was starting to win out against the fear but the fear was still there, like a slap in the face.

All the anger I’d felt only moments before for Simon twisted and turned inward, turning lunch to acid in my stomach.

"Yeah, you're right,” I admitted. “Like I said. No excuse. Simon? Let's go."

Simon shook his head. "She doesn't understand. See, Chloe, it's not Derek's fault. He's super-strong and –"

"And you weren't wearing your kryptonite necklace," I interrupted, unable to keep a bitter smile from twisting my lips. Why couldn't he just shut up, quit being so damn stupid about this? Besides, what was he going to do, tell her I was a werewolf when she was still refusing to admit she saw ghosts? Yeah, that would go over well. I just wanted this over without Simon getting into any trouble.

"Yeah, I'm big," I said. "I got big fast. Maybe I don't know my own strength yet."

"That's not –" Simon began.

I wanted to yell at him to stop it but yelling would only scare her again. Maybe even enough to go running to the nurses like she should have done last night.

"No excuse, like you said. You want me to stay away from you?" I asked Chloe. "Wish granted." 

"Derek, tell her –" Simon started.

I interrupted him. "Drop it, okay?” I'd never in my life actually wanted to hit my brother before but at that moment I did. “She's not interested. She's made that very, very clear. Now let's go before someone catches me with her and I get stomped again."

"Chloe!" Talbot's voice rang through yard.

"Perfect timing," I muttered. "Must have ESP."

Simon gave me a look. He always hated it when I was sarcastic when he was trying to be serious. For once I didn’t care how he felt about it. He was no better than she was at this point, refusing to see the truth for no other reason than because I was involved. If anyone else had caused those bruises on Chloe's arm he'd be the first in line to defend her. Because it was me, though, he refused to acknowledge that I actually was to blame. Just like Chloe refused to accept what she was simply because it was me trying to tell her.

The whole situation was ridiculous and I was sick of it, sick of both of them. Sick of myself most of all.

"Just a second," Chloe called, moving toward the edge of the shed sideways so she could keep her eye on me while she did.

"Go on," I snapped. I'd tried to help but she hadn't even given me the chance to explain what was happening. No, it didn't excuse what I'd done – _nothing_ could excuse what I’d done – but it didn't mean she was worth my time either. She’d made up her mind the first time she saw me and that was all there was to it. "You don't want to be late for your meds," I added. Let her go and get doped up into insensibility like a good little schizophrenic. 

She glared at me and headed for the house, heading around the opposite site of the shed from where I stood.

I should have realized that Simon wouldn't give up that easily. He followed her to the edge of the shed and began murmuring a spell under his breath. I jumped forward but before I could stop him a motion of his fingers had a bit of fog rising up in a cloud just in front of Chloe. She gasped and stumbled back in shock, jumpy as always.

"Simon!" I hissed. I was almost too shocked to be angry. What the hell did he think he was doing? He wouldn't look at me, though, his gaze focused on Chloe's expression as she turned back towards us.

"What is that?" she demanded, pointing at the fog hovering in front of her.

As the shock cleared, I realized that just maybe my plan wasn't dead after all. The first rule of being a supernatural was never to reveal it to anyone, for any reason. _Ever._ If Simon was willing to take the chance of showing what he was, what he could do, just so that she'd listen then he was more committed to helping Chloe than I'd realized.

My brain sped into over-drive and I realized that I could still save this. If I could only get Simon to blame me for what had happened last night, or at least stop trying to blame her, this may still work.

In a way, it was actually a relief. After days of trying to play nice and having thrown back in my face again and again, it felt good to just let go and be a complete bastard, let all the anger and frustration that had been brewing out on someone else.

"What's what?" I asked before looking straight at the smoke. "Huh. Must be a ghost. No, wait, you don't see ghosts. You hallucinate. Guess it's a hallucination then." Simon did look at me then, taken aback. While I was often rude, I was never deliberately cruel, at least when he or Dad were in earshot anyway.

"That's not –" she started.

I didn't let her finish. "It's nothing, Chloe." I shoved my hands in my pockets adopting my most insolent posture. "Just your imagination, like everything else. Now run along and take your meds and be a good girl. Don't worry, I'll stay out of your way from now on. Seems I made a mistake. A big mistake."

Her own hands clenched into fists as she glared. She'd heard what I meant loud and clear; that she'd proven herself not to be worth my time. 

"Watch it, Chloe," I taunted. "You wouldn't want to hit me. Then I'd have to tattle on you."

Simon stepped between us then, finally glaring at me rather than her. "Cut it out, Derek. She didn't tattle –"

"He knows that," she said, meeting my gaze without flinching. There was no fear there at all now, the anger had won. If I was honest, part of me was honestly pleased by that fact. "He's baiting me. He's a jerk and a bully and whatever 'secrets' he's taunting me with, he can keep them. He's right. I'm not interested."

She grabbed the handle of the abandoned trash wagon to take it back to the house.

"Here," Simon called, starting forward. "I'll take that –"

I grabbed his shoulder. If he went after her now while they were both still angry they might fight and I couldn't risk that. I had to make sure they both had a chance to cool down first. "She's got it," I told him.

Simon shrugged my hand off. "Chloe –"

She didn't look around, just wheeled the wagon back to the house without a backward glance.

After she disappeared inside Simon turned on me. "What's the matter with you? You said yourself that she's..."

"So, what?" I demanded, not bothering to keep my frustration with him in check. "You heard her, she’s not interested. She's a pain in the ass and sure as hell doesn't want our help. She doesn't want anything to do with us. So, just drop it!"

"No." Simon shook his head, his face flushing with anger. "She doesn't want anything to do with _you_ and if that's how you've been acting around her, I'm not surprised! She needs help. She needs to know what she is and you've made everything worse!"

It was working. I just wished it didn't make me so miserable. This was what I'd wanted after all, for Simon to focus on the danger she was in to the exclusion of his loyalty to me. It still didn't make having my brother angry at me any less awful. With Dad gone he was all I had left. He was my brother, my best friend and my family all rolled into one. I'd do anything for him. Making him hate me, even temporarily, felt like stabbing myself in the gut.

Still, I didn't bother answering and just walked away.

If hating me was what it took to get him out of here, then I’d do my worst. I loved him too much to do otherwise.


	9. Chapter 8: One Step Forward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If they were calling in Davidoff for this then they viewed it as a potentially serious setback... Then again, it had probably only been a matter of time. Trying to hide necromancy was like trying to hide a grand piano by throwing a blanket over it. Like with what I was, the shape of it still showed through from underneath."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here again is yet another Tuesday update. Mondays are proving FAR too busy to manage to update on them. So, I'm officially giving up on that. It will be updates every TUESDAY from now on.
> 
> Still unpacking boxes in our new place. Less boxes in the house every day, but still far too many to go through.
> 
> *Looks to see if there's feedback in any of the remaining ones*

  
**~ Chapter 8 ~**  
One Step Forward

 

Later, Simon found me in the media room. I'd grabbed the computer and was trying to calm myself down by fighting World War II. The tactics involved in the game helped to keep my mind occupied while the satisfaction of blowing things up helped to relieve some of the stress of the last few days. It wasn’t as good as actually doing something physical to burn off the frustration but it was the next best thing.

My brother didn’t say anything, just dropped onto the recliner and started playing on his Nintendo DS.

He was still upset with me then.

Still, his anger didn’t alter the fact that I was all he had left too. It was better to be together than alone, even when we were fighting.

It was funny, there were times when I would have done anything to get Simon to shut up for ten minutes but when he did I missed the chatter. The silence stretched and I wanted to turn around and apologize. Anything to get him to talk to me again.

I didn't.

The longer he was mad at me the more likely it was that he'd accept that I was at fault for what had happened the night before. Or at least to stop actively blaming Chloe.

After a while, I heard her in the hallway, heard her pause in the doorway. Simon shifted in his seat as if he was going to get up. He'd had plenty of time to cool down and if my reading of Chloe's character was any good at all she wasn't the type to stay mad any more than he was.

He would know that I’d have heard him shifting to the edge of his seat. Would expect me to comment at least. 

"If you're going for a snack, grab me a Coke," I said. I didn't turn around or in any way acknowledge that I knew Chloe was there. By making it sound as if I thought he was going for a snack I might fool him into believing that I’d been absorbed enough in my game to miss her arrival. "You know where they're hidden," I added.

Simon slouched back into his chair. Damn. He didn’t buy it.

"You want a Coke, get it yourself," he muttered, sounding annoyed.

"I didn't ask you to get me one,” I answered back. “I said if you were going."

"I'm not."

"Then say so already,” I snapped. “What's with you tonight?" 

I tried to block them both out and concentrate on my game. It was the best thing I could do for any of us at that point.

In another moment, Chloe continued down the hall.

 

*** * ***

 

Our room was empty when I returned from my shower that evening. Hoping for the best, I tried working on my homework until Simon finally showed a half an hour later.

He sat down on his bed without speaking.

There were only two reasons for that reticence. Either he was still extremely angry at me or he didn’t know what to say. Simon never stayed really angry for long so that left option two. The best reason for that was if he were trying to pick his words in a way to avoid another fight. It didn’t take much deduction to figure out where he’d been and what he’d been doing.

"Have a nice talk with Chloe?" I asked, not turning around. I heard him stiffen.

"I wasn't..." he started.

I did turn around then and gave him a look. "I'm not stupid, you've been dying to talk to her again all afternoon."

He frowned at me but shrugged his defeat. "Yeah, okay. I talked to her."

"And..."

“Why do you care?” There was only the faintest hint of his earlier anger at me.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not mad,” I told him. “So, just spill.”

"Whatever,” he muttered. “She listened. I showed her some stuff, spells. Well, one spell but still — magic. I convinced her that I wasn't playing around or trying to trick her or anything."

I'd have been thanking God, if I believed in Him.

"Good," I said and was annoyed at the surprised look he gave me. "Yeah, I was pissed this afternoon and said some stuff. You know me. I’ve got a temper. Doesn't mean I don't think she needs help pulling her head out of the sand."

"Give her some time, bro," he objected. "This isn't easy for her. I can't imagine what it must be like to suddenly find that everything you knew about the world was wrong. I mean, how would we react if someone tried to tell us that there really were little green guys in flying saucers all over the place? We grew up with this stuff, she didn't."

Actually, he did have a point. Unfortunately, I wasn't in the mood to admit it right at that moment. "So, do you think she believes you now?"

Simon made a face at my impatience. "Give her some time. Let her think about it a bit."

I bit back a growl. "She's had days to..."

Simon cut me off. "No, she hasn't. She's had days of you dogging her while she tries to decide if she believes in ghosts or not. Now she knows that I can do magic, she's seen it. She doesn't have to take it all on faith, you know?"

"Whatever," I muttered. I turned back to my homework. He might be right. Showing her a spell or two might have been exactly what this needed. A show of good faith. Besides, the fact that Simon was stepping up and taking responsibility for helping Chloe... That was better than I could have hoped for at this point.

My plan wasn’t just back on track, it had taken a giant leap forward.

 

*** * ***

 

Tori was gleeful the next morning, telling everyone how she'd caught Chloe talking herself up in the attic the night before. Apparently, she’d woken up in the night and heard a voice upstairs. Following the sound, she’d found Chloe apparently having a conversation with thin air.

Chloe herself wasn't in class but had been called into a special meeting with Gill. Simon and I exchanged more than one look.

My brother was seriously worried. I, on the other hand, was just trying not to show how thrilled I was at this development. _This_ was beyond perfect. Chloe was taking her talk with Simon last night seriously and she’d shown herself to be the type to go looking for answers before. So, it made sense that she'd try to find someplace private to test his conclusions about her abilities. That she was doing so so soon and without prodding meant that Simon had been more convincing the night before then I could have hoped for.

It was only Chloe’s bad luck – and my good luck – that our Queen Victoria had caught her at it. Anyone else would have kept what had happened to themselves, wouldn’t have told the nurses. Tori, on the other hand, clearly had been unable to wait to say so.

They wouldn't transfer Chloe, not for something so minor and a first offense at that. What this would do, however, was to put the fear of a transfer into both her and Simon. I’d make damn sure of it.

To make things even better, Dr. Davidoff, the head of Lyle house turned up to join Gill in Chloe’s special session. I could have cheered. If they were calling in Davidoff for this then they viewed it as a potentially serious setback. I’d worried a little over how I could ratchet up Simon and Chloe’s fear for her. The threat of a transfer was exactly what I’d needed and this gave it to me. Then again, it had probably only been a matter of time. Trying to hide necromancy was like trying to hide a grand piano by throwing a blanket over it. Like with what I was, the shape of it still showed through from underneath. 

"They won't transfer her. Yet," I said to Simon when we had our mid-morning break, plastering on a slightly concerned expression for Simon's benefit.

"Yeah but..." Simon trailed off.

"We'll talk to her," I told Simon. "Find out what happened and see about damage control, okay?"

The fact that I was even _talking_ about damage control was enough to convince Simon that I was worried too. Which, of course, served to worry him even more.

He just nodded, frowning. I tried not to smile.

 

*** * ***

 

I found Chloe a little later when I ducked into the dining room looking to snag some food to keep me going until lunch. She had her back to me as she set the table.

Best to try going to back to playing nice, I decided.

"I'm behind you," I said, trying not to startle her.

It didn't work. She still jumped and spun.

"I can't win," I muttered, exasperated. "You're as skittish as a kitten."

"So if you sneak up and announce yourself, that's going to startle me less than if you tap me on the shoulder?" she demanded.

"I didn't sneak –" I started, then gave up.

At least she was back to snapping at me instead of shying away and I smelled nothing in the air but her usual Eau de Anxiety. Perhaps a bit more than usual, which wasn’t surprising after the morning she’d had, but no actual fear. I grabbed a couple of rolls from the basket, rearranging to others so the nurses wouldn't notice. "I just wanted to say that if you and Simon want to talk, you don't need to do it behind my back. Unless you want to."

"We were just –"

I didn't let her finish the excuse. "I know what you were doing. Simon already told me. You want answers. I've been trying to give them to you all along," I couldn't help but add. "You just have to ask."

"But you said –"

“Tonight," I continued. We didn't have time for her to hold on to what had been said when we’d fought the day before. "Eight. Our room. Tell Mrs. Talbot you'll be with me for math tutoring."

"Your side is off-limits," Chloe objected. "Is she going to let me go up there, alone, with a boy?"

I could have cheered. I'd been half worried that she'd continue refusing to have anything to do with me, which would definitely put a crimp on the situation. It seemed this morning’s special sessions had done the trick though. She knew she was in trouble now and was finally willing to take the help I’d been offering from the beginning. "Just tell her it's for math. She won't question it."

Chloe didn't look convinced. "Will that be... okay? You and I aren't supposed to –"

“Tell her Simon will be there. And talk to Talbot, not Van Dop." Van Dop was a suspicious bitch, it was almost impossible to get anything past the woman. Besides, she hated me. Well no, maybe that wasn’t fair, but she sure as hell didn’t trust me out of her sight. Not that I could blame her really. It was just that she seemed to take my diagnosis very seriously while Talbot liked to think the best of everyone. Besides, Talbot was also slightly in awe of my intellect.

To be honest, though, people always did seem to react strangely to the fact that I was smart. I was big and ugly and strong; in most people's minds that meant I had to be a dumb brute who'd have to take his shoes off to count higher than ten. When they found out I was doing college level math at sixteen they just couldn't seem to wrap their heads around the idea.

I turned and left, not giving Chloe time to raise any more objections. All I could do was hope she'd show. Simon would be there, though, so she probably would. Girls didn't generally miss the opportunity to be around Simon, sometimes even when it meant being around me as well.

“You told her to talk to Talbot, right?” was Simon’s only comment when I relayed the plan to him.

“Of course,” I said testily. He just nodded and went back to brooding over a social studies assignment he’d been pretending to focus on for the last hour, too worried to be actually getting anywhere with it.

 

*** * ***

 

“— Real problem is how well she’s settling in,” Gill was saying.

I stopped as I was about to step out of the bathroom, listening. Gill probably hadn’t noticed my heading into the bathroom. Normally, it wouldn’t have mattered since you couldn’t hear what was being said in her office from the bathroom. The locks in this place might be crap but the sound proofing, particularly around Gill’s office, was actually pretty good. However, this time she’d left the door open. Normally, that it wouldn’t matter, no one with regular hearing would be able to make out what was being said from this distance. With my hearing, however, and both the bathroom and office doors open, I could hear without any trouble.

I stayed put. If I stepped out into the hall she might hear that someone was in the hall and shut the door.

“Or rather, not settling in,” Gill continued.

“It’s too bad that whole problem with Elizabeth happened her first night here,” Davidoff answered. “That certainly can’t have made the transition any easier.”

Dr. Davidoff was the head of the board that ran Lyle House. He generally only came once every two weeks when he would have a short session with each of us. Sometimes Gill sat in on those sessions, sometimes she didn’t. While he may be a good psychiatrist — I really had zero knowledge on that score — his ability to get on with teenagers was pretty much nil. He was one of those middle aged guys with no kids of his own who tried _way_ too hard to be friendly while not having the slightest idea how patronizing he was being. The fact that he didn’t seem to mean anything bad by it didn’t make it any less annoying. Still, I had nothing exactly against the man. I couldn’t talk to him as I could Gill and I hated how condescending he could be to Simon at times. Still, Gill insisted he was an accomplished doctor and that she got a great deal out of his feedback after the bi-weekly session I had with him. So, I did my best in them if only because she asked.

“That was unfortunate,” Gill agreed. “To be honest, I’m worried that it may have negatively impacted how she views Lyle House. Especially as I got the impression she and Liz had been getting along quite well. And the more negative her view of the facility is the harder it’s going to be for her to thrive here.”

“Has she made any particular friends since then?” Davidoff asked.

“She and Rae seem to be getting on. Rae even asked to move from the room she shared with Tori to share with Chloe instead. Although, how much of that has to do with how well they get on rather than how much Rae wanted out of that room, I don’t know.” There was a sort of wry amusement in Gill’s voice and I couldn’t help a grin. Rachelle and Victoria hated one another with a passion. Having been stuck sharing a room had _not_ been fun for either of them. Still, when had Rachelle moved into Chloe’s room? I’d missed that.

“While I can’t say I’m unhappy that she’s making a friend,” Davidoff said. “I could wish it had been someone other than Rachelle.”

“I know,” Gill agreed. “I feel the same. As much as she says she wants to get better, in all honesty I don’t think Rae has ever really taken her diagnosis all that seriously.”

“She talks the talk,” Davidoff replied. “I can’t fault anything she says. However, I agree. I don’t think she honestly believes that she even has a problem.”

Personally, I thought Rachelle’s skepticism regarding her diagnosis was well founded.

“Exactly,” Gill agreed. “And if that attitude has begun to rub off on Chloe we may be in for more trouble in the future.”

Gill’s phone rang at that point and Davidoff took his leave, shutting Gill’s office door behind him as he headed for the front door. 

As soon as he left I finally headed back to the dining room and my waiting math homework. I still needed to get a good deal done before I was kicked out in a little while so dinner preparations could begin. 

Mulling over what I’d heard, however, I began thinking of how I could turn what it to my advantage. They hadn’t _actually_ said they didn’t think Chloe belonged here and hadn’t said anything about transferring her. Then again, I didn’t have to tell Chloe or Simon exactly what had or hadn’t been said. Yes, I could definitely twist this to my advantage without actually lying to either of them.

 

*** * ***

 

I was back in the kitchen again early that evening, looking for some food that wouldn't be immediately missed. I could hear Chloe and Rachelle down in the basement trying to get the locked closet door open. Why, I had no idea. What was it with Chloe and that door?

They were making a racket, though. While I knew that a normal person wouldn't be able to hear what they were saying, I was pretty sure they'd have heard them rattling the door like that.

"It's not perfect," Rae was saying as she struggled with it. "But it'll –" She stopped, more sounds of door rattling. "Or maybe it –" a tearing sound "– won't," she finished. “Well, shit.”

"There's a piece caught," Chloe said. "Here, let me."

Another tearing sound. They'd probably been trying the old card trick. Slip a credit card, heavy business card or something like that into the crack between the door and the doorjamb and use it to force the bolt down. It worked great on a less securely locked door and I was willing to bet that was how they'd got into Gill's office. It was how I'd got into it as well. I knew from experience, though, that that closet was locked with a kind of dead bolt that couldn’t be forced that way. I wasn’t sure why they were so worried about someone getting into the crawlspace but it was probably an insurance thing.

"Get the feeling someone doesn't want us going in there?" Rachelle muttered. "We're going to need the key. It might be on the ring with the one for the shed in the kitchen."

"I'll get it," Chloe offered.

I had my back to the stairs as Chloe came up them and I heard her pause when she entered. Then she started moving forward again, trying to be quite. Was she trying to sneak up on me? I listened. Yes, she was. She actually was. Why…?

Good grief, she was trying to take the opportunity to pay me back for always startling her.

I couldn’t help a welling up of relief. She really wasn’t afraid of me anymore. Instead of leaving when she saw me already in the room, she decided instead to get a bit of her own back instead. Too bad she made so much noise. Still, credit where it was due for trying.

"The key you want isn't on that ring," I told her, not turning around.

Chloe froze, her breath catching in shock. I grabbed an apple before getting the key ring that was stuck to the back of the fridge with a magnet.

"Try these," I told her, handing her the keys on my way out of the room. "I have no idea what you guys are doing down there but next time you want to secretly open a locked door, don't whale on it hard enough to bring down the house."

Chloe just took the keys and headed back to the basement without a word.

This time I didn’t bother repressing a grin since there was no one there to see it. She had a hell of a lot of backbone, I had to give her that. For once, I could almost see why Simon had taken a liking to a girl.


	10. Chapter 9: Supernatural 101

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It was actually a relief to speak openly about what we were when Simon and I hadn't been able to talk to anyone else about it in three months. Maybe it was just because I was so used to home being someplace where I could let my guard down like that. Still, there was something oddly comfortable about wandering in here and joining in their conversation as though Chloe had been part of our lives for longer than just a few days."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this Tuesday updating thing will work. *g*
> 
> Okay, this is also unbetaed. However, my beta reader is back in business and I'll be updating these last few chapters with the betaed versions soon.
> 
> *drifts off into wonderful daydreams of feedback*

  
**~ Chapter 9 ~**  
Supernatural 101

 

"Do you think she's having a problem with the nurses?" Simon asked for the umpteenth time in the last half hour. I was sitting at my desk trying to work on an English assignment while Simon sprawled on his bed ostensibly reading a comic.

I didn't bother answering this time as I could hear Chloe on the stairs as he said it. It was almost eight o'clock on the dot and I was relieved that she was on time, if only to shut Simon up. She tapped at the door frame tentatively, her math book and a notebook under her arm. I was pleased, though not all that surprised, that she'd remembered to bring the props. Simon would have forgotten but Chloe was turning out to be rather more sensible than most people. Though considering most people, that wasn’t hard.

"Hey." Simon dropped his comic and sat up. "I was just going to tell Derek we should go downstairs, make sure the nurses weren't giving you a hassle. They didn't, did they?"

She just shook her head.

I put my math text on the bedside table and dropped my binder on top of it. First things, first. It was best if I gave them some time to themselves, foster the attachment. Besides, now that Chloe was actually here, in our room, I realized that I should probably make more of an effort not to smell. Dad had said that it was probably because of what I was that puberty was hitting me so unusually hard and that it would most likely get better sooner rather than later. I only hoped he was right. It was all I could do to keep the B.O. in check. The acne was beyond help.

"I'll be in the shower," I told them. "Start without me."

"Won't the nurses hear the water running?" Chloe objected.

I stifled a sigh. Couldn't she ever just go along with _anything_ I said?

"Tell them I was already in there,” I said with a shrug. “I'll only be a few minutes."

I gave her a wide circle as I headed for the door, knowing I needed that shower and not wanting to give her any more of a disgust of me than she already had.

Chloe didn't seem inclined to let it go. "Why don't you just shower in the morning?"

"I do," I muttered, getting out of there.

_Focus on Simon, stupid,_ I thought. _He's the one who likes you._

"Come on in," Simon said as I headed for the bathroom. "I don't bite."

His bedsprings squeaked as he changed positions and then squeaked again, a lot quieter, as Chloe sat down.

"I'd say this is the first time I've had a girl in my bed... if I didn't mind sounding like a total loser."

I rolled my eyes as I shut the bathroom door. Way to go, Romeo. Then again, what did I know about girls? Maybe that kind of weak joke would appeal to her. Simon generally seemed to know what he was doing with girls, so I’d just leave how to proceed up to him.

Chloe apparently took the opportunity to snoop.

"If you can understand any of that,” Simon said, “you're way ahead of me."

"I thought Derek was in tenth grade." Her tone said that she was as taken aback as everyone else by the fact that big and ugly didn't equal stupid. I turned on the shower, allowing them to have a little heart-to-heart.

I still could hear the murmur of their voices as I showered but couldn't understand the words. At one point I heard Chloe laugh which was definitely a good sign. Simon went quiet the moment I turned off the shower, though. Okay, interesting.

"He just got out," Chloe said softly. "He can't hear –"

"Oh yes, he can," Simon told her.

Chloe cleared her throat. "Okay," she said, deliberately speaking in a normal tone of voice. "So we've got sorcerers, witches, half-demons, necromancers, shamans, and other really rare types, like Derek." I froze. Please don't let him have told her what I was. "That's it, right? I'm not going to run into any werewolves or vampires, am I?"

Simon laughed and it would have sounded completely natural to anyone who didn't know him as well as I did. "That'd be cool."

I relaxed. Whatever he'd told her I was, it wasn't the truth. It wasn't that I particularly cared if Chloe found out I was a werewolf, but... Okay, yes dammit, I did care. People acted differently when they knew and she was only now starting to listen to us, letting us help her. I couldn’t afford to have her running away again. Only Simon and Dad had ever not been bothered by it. I remembered the reactions of the people at the lab all too well and it would be best for all of us if Chloe was at least a little comfortable around me for the time being. Finding out that I was a fairytale monster wouldn’t help at this point.

At least Simon had been giving her the basics. We’d agreed before she came up that that was probably the best first step here.

"So, there are three of us?" she continued. "In one place? That has to mean something."

"Derek thinks it's because some supernatural powers – like yours and his – can't be explained, so humans chalk them up to mental illness. Some kids in homes could be supernatural. Most aren't. You have to talk to him about that. He explains stuff better." I growled inwardly. Okay, maybe I did, but it was important that _he_ explained this stuff to her. The more responsibility he took in what was going on with Chloe the more likely he'd be to go find Dad for her sake.

"Okay, back to me, then. What do these ghosts want?"

"Help, I guess."

"With what? Why me?"

"Because you can hear them," I said, reentering the room. For once Chloe didn't jump. If I left it all up to Simon we’d be at this all night. "Not much sense in talking to someone who can't hear you.”

"Well, duh." Whatever else Chloe's acceptance of what she was had done, it seemed not just to have taken her fear of me away but brought back the snark. Definitely an improvement.

"I wasn't going to say it," I shot back.

It was actually a relief to speak openly about what we were when Simon and I hadn't been able to talk to anyone else about it in three months. Maybe it was just because I was so used to home being someplace where I could let my guard down like that. Still, there was something oddly comfortable about wandering in here and joining in their conversation as though Chloe had been part of our lives for longer than just a few days.

I folded my towel and hung it over my desk chair. "How many necromancers do you think are walking around out there?"

"How would I know?" she demanded.

"Well, if the answer was 'a whole lot,' don't you think you'd have heard of them?"

"Ease up, bro," Simon muttered, telling me I was pushing too hard again. Inwardly I sighed and consciously tried to switch to a less agnostic tone.

"We're talking hundreds in the whole country," I told her, trying to think of an analogy that would help. "Have you ever met an albino?"

"No."

"Statistically speaking, you're about three times more likely to bump into an albino than a necromancer. So, imagine you're a ghost. If you see a necro, it's like being stranded on a desert island, then spotting a plane overheard. Are you going to try to get their attention? Of course. As for what they want?" I turned the desk chair around and straddled it. "Who knows? If you were a ghost and you bumped into the one living being who could hear you, I'm sure you'd want something from her. To know what they want, you're going to need to ask them."

"Easier said than done," she said, irritation clear in her tone though I was fairly sure it wasn’t directed at me. "There's a ghost in the basement here. Well, mostly the basement. He was up in the attic last night.”

Huh. Well, that explained a few things.

“But I can't understand him,” she continued. “He keeps cutting in and out. I think it must be the meds they've got me on. He said something about being blocked. I did get that he wanted me to open that locked closet door down there."

And there was another mystery solved. This time I allowed myself to admit that I actually was impressed. She'd gone from refusing to talk about ghosts at all to actively trying to help them damn fast.

"Rae and I got the door open but there's nothing in that closet."

"There's the crawlspace," I suggested.

She nodded, clearly not surprised that I'd already been in there. "Yeah, we found that. But there wasn't anything there but Lyle House's accounts. I didn't read them too carefully, I guess there could be something incriminating in them."

"There isn't," I said. "I already looked through them." She was surprised at that but I ignored it. “There could still be something back there. Something you didn't find. Something important to him." I scratched at my cheek, then winced as I caught a zit. I pulled my hand back, hoping I hadn't done any more damage to my face. I was ugly enough already. "Maybe a paper or an object he'd like you to pass on to his family," I suggested.

"Or clues to his murder," Simon said, grinning. "Or buried treasure."

I gave him a look. "Moving right along... it's probably something stupid, like a letter he forgot to give to his wife. Meaningless."

Chloe looked like she didn't think that was meaningless at all. Right, girls were supposed to be into that kind of stuff. She’d probably think something like that was romantic or something.

"Whatever it is," she said, "the point is moot because as long as I'm on these pills, I can't make contact to ask."

There was moisture on my cheek where I'd scratched and could smell blood. Damn. I swiped at it, the coppery tang of the scent making me edgy as it always did. 

"Then you need to stop taking the pills," I snapped.

Simon gave me a look that said that that was over the line but Chloe didn't even flinch and when she answered her voice had an edge of its own. "Love to. If I could. But after what happened last night, they're giving me urine tests now."

Well, shit.

Simon made a face. "Ugh. That's harsh." Then he snapped his fingers. "Hey, I've got an idea. It's kinda gross but what if you take the pills, crush them and mix them with your, you know, urine."

I stared at him. He had to be kidding, right? Did he actually think that they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the medication in its raw form and what it metabolized into once it was in the body?

"What?" he demanded as he saw my expression.

"You did pass chem last year, didn't you?"

He flipped me the finger. "Okay, genius, what's your idea?"

"I'll think about it," I said. "We should get her off those meds. I don't really care what that ghost wants but he could be useful. As long as we have a willing subject, Chloe should take advantage of it, so she can learn. It's not like she's going anywhere soon." 

Time to ramp up the stress level, I decided. Simon and Chloe seemed too comfortable at the moment, relaxed and unconcerned about anything beyond idly wondering what some dead guy wanted.

"Unless they ship her off," I added.

"Not funny, bro."

"Not trying to be funny. Seeing ghosts isn't easy to hide. It's not like casting spells. After this morning, with Davidoff and Gill, I caught some of their conversation later —" I glanced at Chloe, watching to see how she was taking this. I had to make what I’d heard believable and super-hearing wasn’t yet part of her personal horizons. "I was walking by and heard —"

"She knows about your hearing, bro." I glared at Simon who shrugged. "She figured it out. She's not stupid. Anyway, you overheard..."

No, she wasn't stupid and neither was I. I knew he'd told her but before I could say anything more I heard steps on the stairs. "Someone's coming."

"Boys? Chloe?" Talbot called. "Snack time. Come on down."

"We're coming," Simon called back.

"Just a sec," Chloe said, looking worried. She lowered her voice. "You heard the doctors talking. What about?"

"You. And whether Lyle House is the right place for you."

I got up and headed down for snack, giving them both time to think about that one.


	11. Chapter 10: What About Liz?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So, why was Chloe the first one to try to talk to her after she was transferred out? For the first time in a while I wondered just what had happened the night Liz had been taken away. With everything else going on I’d all but forgotten about that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the month of July updates to the story may be erratic. I'm going to be out of town multiple times for various family functions and, of course, for my own birthday. So, updates will likely be every two weeks instead of every week.
> 
> Thank you for your understanding.
> 
> *watches along side the road as she drives, keeping an eye out for feedback in need of a lift*

  
**~ Chapter 10 ~**  
What About Liz?

 

The only certain way I could think of to deal with the medication problem was one I wasn't sure a girl would go along with. I knew enough about the kind of tests they’d use to make sure she was taking her medication to be fairly certain that what it wouldn’t show was how _old_ said urine was. Unfortunately, the logical plan of action in that case was a little gross — even I thought so — and girls always seemed to be a squeamish about anything gross. Still, it was the only thing I could think of off the top of my head that I was sure would work. 

I’d long ago figured out how to get around Lyle House’s security, it was the heart of my plan to get Simon out. So, that night when everyone was asleep I deactivated the alarms and slipped out back. Checking the shed I found what I thought I’d remembered seeing in there before, an old Mason jar. Slipping back in, I reactivated the alarms and cleaned the jar out before hiding it in the media room.

When we broke for morning snack the next day I retrieved it without anyone noticing.

“Chloe,” I called as she headed from the classroom toward the kitchen. When she turned around I motioned her back to where the stairs to the boy’s side of the second floor where we’d be out of the direct line of sight from anyone in the hall.

It said a lot that she followed me willingly enough. I wasn’t sure what it said about her sanity exactly — probably nothing good — but it did make my life easier.

"Here,” I said, handing her the jar. “Take this up to your room and hide it."

She looked at it blankly. "It's a... jar."

Duh. "It's for your urine."

"My what?" she squeaked.

I rolled my eyes, stifling a growl of annoyance. Why girls were so weird about stuff that was perfectly natural was something I'd never understand. Words like urine or excrement or vomit were taboo to them as though they were swear words or something.

"Urine," I said, quietly, leaning down closer to her level. Jeez, she was short. "Pee. Whatever. For the testing."

She looked at the jar again. "I think they'll give me something smaller," she commented dryly.

I couldn't help it, this time a small growl did escape. I just hoped she didn't notice. I reached for her arm to pull her up the stairs so we could talk without risking being overheard but stopped. She was so damn _small_. The sight of her sailing back across the laundry room and the scent of her fear still haunted me. The cry she’d made when I’d grabbed her arm seemed momentarily to echo in my head. I pushed it back. I couldn’t trust myself not to screw up and accidentally hurt her again, so touching her was out of the question.

I waved her up the steps instead before heading up myself. She took her time joining me on the landing.

In hushed tones I explained the plan. She’d save today's urine, when she was actually taking her meds, in the jar. Then fill the sample cups they gave her from the jar over the next several days while she wasn’t taking the meds. I was fairly confident that they'd never know the difference. 

She balked as I knew she would.

Didn't she _want_ to stop tacking the damn meds and figure out what that ghost wanted? The disgusted look on her face as she looked at the jar, though, said that she was more concerned about the gross factor than the ghost.

I gave up.

"Oh, for God's sake,” I muttered. “Save your piss. Don't save your piss. It's all the same to me."

Simon chose that moment to stick his head around the corner and look up at us. Even as annoyed as I was his expression was priceless. "I was going to ask what you guys were doing but hearing that, I think I'll pass."

"You're better off not knowing," Chloe muttered as she headed down the stairs, eyeing the jar as though it _already_ contained something disguising.

However, she stashed it in her school bag instead of getting rid of it so there was hope.

 

*** * ***

 

Today was one of Davidoff’s by-weekly visits which meant longer sessions for each of us as he checked on our progress.

We all settled in to the classroom and endured a short and pointless lesson from Wang before settling in to work on our assignments. After a while, Talbot came to collect Rae for her daily session with Gill. An hour later she returned to collect Victoria for her daily session with Gill while Rae was in her biweekly session with Davidoff. 

"Mrs. Talbot," I heard Tori ask once they were in the hallway. "When can I call Liz? I miss her."

"I'm sure you do, dear," Talbot answered. "But the doctors have said that she's having a hard time settling in where she is now. Her last night here was very hard and it's best if she isn't reminded of Lyle House just now."

"But..." Tori started.

"I know you children miss her," Talbot interjected. "Chloe was just asking the same thing last night. We’ll see about allowing you to talk to her this weekend."

I glanced sideways at where Chloe sat, frowning over her science book. She arrived here the day before Liz was sent away. So, why was Chloe the first one to try to talk to her after she was transferred out? For the first time in a while I wondered just what had happened the night Liz had been taken away. With everything else going on I’d all but forgotten about that.

It being Friday, Wang was even less interested in teaching than she usually was. So, she let us out of class early for lunch. With Victoria and Rachelle still in their sessions that just left the three of us. While that was good, finding a place to talk where we wouldn't be overheard wasn't so easy. Normally the yard would have been reasonably safe, but since Van Dop was out there weeding the small garden that was out of the question.

Simon solved the problem by offering to help Chloe finish the laundry. They headed down and I promised to sneak down to join them when no one was looking. After all the trouble, Chloe and I didn't need to advertise the fact that we were spending time around each other.

I could hear Simon talking as I headed down shortly afterwards. "You don't need to tell me there might not be a ghost here and I'm not going to make you try to contact it. When Derek comes down, he might. Don't let him push you around."

"I don't push her anywhere," I called down. "If I tell someone to do something and they do it?" I turned the corner into the laundry room to find them both sitting on the floor sorting clothes into whites and colors. "That's not my problem. All she has to do is say no. Her tongue works, doesn't it?"

Chloe's expression said that I'd somehow insulted her. How, I didn't know. All I’d said was that she was capable of standing up for herself. Wasn’t that a compliment?

I decided to change the subject. After all, there were far more important things to talk about.

"So if they decide to transfer you, what are you going to do about it?" I asked her.

Simon balled up a shirt he'd been holding. "For God's sake, Derek, they're not —"

"They're thinking about it," I said. Granted, that was stretching the truth by a considerable margin but they didn’t know that. "She needs a plan."

"Does she?" he said, throwing the shirt into the colored pile, suddenly pissed. "What about you, bro? If word comes down that you're next to go, do you have a plan?"

He glared at me and I felt my jaw clench. Why, why, why?

Chloe! I wanted to shout at him. Focus on Chloe!

However, it seemed he couldn't pass up the opportunity to start this shit again. I was trying to keep this about Chloe, about helping her because that was the only way I was going to get Simon out of here. But Simon couldn't drop it. He never could. I was all too aware of Chloe's eyes glancing back and forth between us as we glared at each other.

For God’s sake, he’d seen the bruises on Chloe’s arm just yesterday! What the hell was it going to take to convince him of the fact that I belonged here, that was dangerous? When I killed somebody?

After a long moment, Chloe stood, gathering a load for the washer. Her voice was calm and reasonable as she interrupted our silent argument. "If they do, I don't see that I have a lot of options. I can't exactly refuse."

I turned on her, my anger at Simon suddenly finding a new direction. What, she was just going to let them lock her up someplace with the looney toons? She knew what she was, had accepted that she was a necromancer and now she was just going to let them take her off somewhere and dope her into insensibility or something? It pissed me off, probably more than it should have done.

"So you'll just give in?" I demanded. "Go along like a good girl?"

"Ease up, bro," Simon muttered.

I didn't even look at him, still too angry. He was right though, damnit. I needed to calm down. I started running through the mental exercises I’d been working on with Gill to control my temper. It wasn’t easy. Familiar things, I decided. Focus on familiar things.

Grabbing the laundry Chloe had missed, her arms being too damn small to pick up a full load at the same time, I dumped it into the washer with the rest. A change of tactics was required before this turned into a fight, so I mentally searched for another topic.

Glancing down at Chloe beside me, one came to me as I began to calm down. "They won't let you talk to Liz, will they?"

"Huh – what?" That caught her off guard and she looked up at me her eyes doing that too-wide to be completely natural thing they did when she was surprised. Her eyes were big enough, but when she widened them like that it was almost creepy — like a real life anime character.

"Tori asked this morning. I heard. Talbot told her no and said she'd told you the same thing when you asked last night." She just stood there staring up at me with the box of laundry detergent in her hands. Finally, I took it from her and grabbed the measuring cup from the shelf feeling a great deal calmer. "This helps," I said, waving it at her.

She didn't rise to the bait. "They said I can call Liz on the weekend."

"Still, seems a little odd. You barely knew the girl, and you're the first one wanting to call her?"

Her eyes narrowed. "It's called being considerate," she snapped, reaching over to turn on the washing machine. "Maybe you've heard of it?"

Was she paying _any_ attention to what she was doing? I batted her hand away from the dials before she washed the darks in hot water. "Darks, cold. Or you'll end up with the dye bleeding." I glanced at her. "See? I'm considerate."

"Sure, when it's mostly your stuff in there."

Behind us, Simon snorted a laugh. I ignored him.

"As for Liz," Chloe continued. "I just wanted to be sure she was okay."

"Why wouldn't she be?" I didn’t particularly care about Liz, but the more I got Chloe thinking about what could happen to _her_ if she was transferred the better.

She looked away, biting her lip. "Liz... I think Liz was like us."

"A supernatural?" Simon asked.

Chloe nodded.

"How do you figure that?"

Simon and I had come here together and Chloe's powers, like mine, were exactly the kind of thing that would be mistaken for mental illness. While unlikely the three of us being here together wasn’t outside the realm of the reasonable. But for there to be four of us? That was stretching things.

Chloe took a deep breath and leaned back against the washing machine.

"I think... I think something bad might have happened to Liz," Chloe started softly. "Okay, look. You know that she thought she had a poltergeist, right? And that she said it was the poltergeist that was throwing things instead of her?"

We both nodded and she continued, speaking slowly as if testing her words mentally before saying them. "After what Tori said about my seeing ghosts Liz decided that maybe I could help her. She woke me up that night, wanting to have a séance and see if maybe I could talk to it, tell it to leave her alone. I was... Well, I didn’t say anything exactly but she could tell I didn’t believe her. I mean, ghosts? I thought she was just, you know, disturbed. I didn’t think that there was anything more to it than that.” I could see the shame in her expression as she turned her face away. I wanted to say that she couldn’t have known any different at that point but, of course, she already knew that. It wouldn’t change the guilt.

“Anyway, she realized I didn’t believe her about the poltergeist. At which point she got really upset and suddenly... everything just went crazy. Her bottles of hair gel exploded. I mean _actually_ exploded. There _still_ gobs of the stuff on the ceiling in our room. And they were across the room from us when this happened. She wasn’t anywhere near them. The pictures flew off the wall, the glass in the frames shattered before they even hit the ground. One almost hit me but she pulled me out of the way. She was totally freaking out because there was stuff flying all over the room and she didn't seem to know how to make it stop. She kept begging for it to stop. The fact is though that she didn’t touch _anything_ and it was obvious that she was just as scared and confused as I was. But the thing is, I hadn’t even started taking this medication yet, so I think I would have seen a ghost there if there’d been one. There wasn’t. And it only started after she got upset. Like she was doing it but with her mind or something and didn’t know it."

Simon was sitting with his mouth open and I doubted my expression was any less shocked. No wonder she had been so reticent when it came to discussing it the morning after. Sure, I’d tossed around the idea with Simon but I hadn’t actually expected there to be a supernatural component to what happened that night.

Still, I found it hard to believe that yet another supernatural had ended up here. It just didn’t make sense. Maybe Liz had been right and there really was a poltergeist attached to her. Somehow that seemed more reasonable than believing that Liz had been a supernatural as well. Though why Chloe hadn’t seen the ghost I didn’t know.

Chloe kept talking, staring down at the floor. "Mrs. Talbot and Miss Van Dop came in and everything just... stopped. I tried to say that it was my fault but they didn't believe me. They just medicated Liz and took her away. They cleaned up the room and I went back to bed.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “Okay, so this is the weird part. When I woke up that next morning, Liz was there. Like that janitor from my school she looked perfectly real. Just sitting on her bed.”

“You think she was a ghost?” Simon asked wide-eyed.

Chloe shrugged. “She was sitting on her bed like nothing had happened, wiggling her toes and talking about how her brother had given her the socks she was wearing. They had like, neon giraffes on them."

"So... Liz returned from the great beyond to show you her really cool socks?" I asked, trying to wrap my head around this.

Chloe rolled her eyes. "If you'll _listen_... She told me then about this really weird dream she’d had. About waking up on this cold table and a doctor leaning over her. She asked where she was and the doctor was really shocked and called another doctor over. Liz could hear them talking. She said it was like she wasn't supposed to have woken up and now they didn't know what to do with her. Then she couldn't breath, couldn't move… and then she woke up back in our room at Lyle House.”

Simon frowned. “Like they killed her and she just went back to where she’d been before?”

"I don’t know,” Chloe replied. “At first, I thought maybe I'd dreamed the whole night before. They gave me some pills after they took Liz away so I was pretty groggy. I got up and went over to her but when I tried to touch her arm my hand went right through it. She saw and screamed and then... She wasn't there anymore." Chloe's voice faded out for a moment and I could see the horror of that moment etched in her expression. “It wasn’t a dream though. I _was_ actually up and standing beside her bed. And I don’t sleep walk or anything like that.”

I opened my mouth to say that since they had given her a sleeping pill she might have actually dreamed the whole thing, just the same, but she kept going before I could speak.

"Then last night that ghost, the one who wanted that door open," she waved toward the locked closet. "He woke me up and I followed him up to the attic. I couldn't really hear what he was saying, just something about being blocked. Then I turned around and Liz was there again. She looked around confused, asking why we were in the attic. Then she remembered about wanting to do a séance and thought we’d gone up there to have it. Then she disappeared again and that’s when Tori showed up. There is no way I was asleep that time and I hadn’t been given any sleeping pills or anything. It was all real."

Chloe fell silent. I looked at Simon who just sat there, staring, a shirt dangling from his hands.

Finally, it was he who broke the silence. "That sure sounds like a ghost."

My mind was spinning. All of this was strange and I wasn’t sure what to think about any of it. Simon was right, it did sound like a ghost. Still…

"Just because she's a ghost doesn't mean she was murdered," I objected. Okay, I wanted the two of them worried enough to get out of here but this was getting silly. "She could have had a completely unrelated accident on the way to the hospital. If that happened, they wouldn't want to tell us right away."

"Or maybe she's not dead at all," Chloe suggested, looking up at me. "Could she be astral projecting? Shamans do that, right? It might also explain how she was moving stuff around. It wasn't a poltergeist spirit — it was her spirit or however it works.”

Actually, that was kind of clever. It was true that Shaman’s could leave their bodies. However, how that worked exactly I had no idea and I didn’t know if it was possible for them to effect the physical world while they were in their spirit forms or whatever or if necromancers could see them when they were out their bodies.

Chloe turned fully to me, her expression earnest. “You said our powers kick in around puberty, right? If we don't know what we are when that happens, this is just the kind of place we'd end up. A home for teens with weird problems."

I shrugged. Yeah, okay, she had a point. I still wasn't convinced that Liz was anything other than a human, though. The probability of four of us ending up in the same group home was so infinitesimal as to be more or less nonexistent. I didn’t get it.

"Would being a shaman explain what she was doing?” Chloe demanded, when I didn’t give her more of an answer. “Throwing stuff around? Could she have been popping out of her body without knowing it?"

"I... don't know," I admitted grudgingly. I had to think about this. What was more, I had to figure out how to spin it to aid my plan. All of this was getting way off the subject of getting Simon out of Lyle House. So, I temporized. "Let me think about it,” I told them.


	12. Chapter 11: Therapy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There was nothing I could say to make Simon understand what it was like, knowing what you could do without even trying. He could never grasp what it was to be afraid of yourself."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTEST!
> 
> Come up with a better name for this chapter because I give up. Winner will get something, just as soon as I figure out what it is. ;-)
> 
> I hope everyone is having a lovely summer. (Or winter if you're in the Southern Hemisphere.)

  
**~ Chapter 11 ~**  
Therapy

 

“Derek!” Davidoff said cheerfully as I came into the office. He was using what was usually the nurses’ office for his special sessions today as he usually did when Gill wasn’t sitting in on them.

Van Dopp and Talbot each had a desk, but unlike Gill’s they each faced the walls rather than into the room, so I wouldn’t face him across a desktop as happened when we met in Gill’s office. I almost preferred when we did, as the formal setting seemed to make him a little less desperate to pretend we were best buds. Davidoff sat in Van Dopp’s chair, his back to the desk as he faced the middle of the room. He motioned toward the seat at Talbot’s desk for me to take.

“Sir,” I replied as I sat down.

“And how are things going with you?” he asked in that way over the top ‘pretending we’re good friends’ tone. It grated on my nerves and I had to remind myself, yet again, that Gill had said it was important to co-operate with Davidoff as much as possible.

“Fine,” I answered, careful not to show my annoyance.

“Really?” Davidoff asked. “Because I heard there was some little trouble.”

Crap, I’d hoped we wouldn’t discuss this but I guess I should have expected he would bring it up.

“It’s nothing,” I said. “It’s been resolved.”

Davidoff’s brows rose in surprise. “Has it?” He went on before I could formulate a reply. “I do understand you know,” he told me, smiling hugely. “At your age I’d be more worried if you weren’t looking twice at the girls.”

Oh dear God. Please, not this. I’d already had to endure this particular conversation with Dad when he decided it was time. That had been bad enough, at least until he gave up and just handed me some text books on the subject and told me to ask if I had any questions. That had been better all the way around. Somehow I doubted Davidoff would accept that solution.

“The problem is,” Davidoff went on, “getting a girl’s attention isn’t enough. You have to show them that you’re worth their time. Be nice to them, become friends first.”

His left hand sat on his thigh, where his wedding ring was conspicuous by its absence. As far as I knew the man had never been married. I knew it wasn’t fair to judge the man by that. He might be quite the lady’s man outside of work but somehow I doubted it.

“I don’t believe you’ve ever had a girlfriend, have you? Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” he hurried to add. “It’s not unusual not to start dating until your older, no matter what the movies say. I certainly had never had a girlfriend at your age.”

“No,” I said, answering the question that had been almost lost in the rambling. I couldn’t help but glance surreptitiously towards the clock on the desk behind him.

“Have you ever just had a friend who was a girl?”

Was he kidding? I knew he’d read my file and considering how much time Gill and I had discussed my friends, or lack of them, he had to be aware that I hadn’t. I’d never had a friend of any kind other than Simon. It was something Gill and talked about many times.

“No,” I finally managed to get out.

Davidoff paused, the fact that he was getting nothing but monosyllabic answers from me having seemed to finally percolate through. I had been monosyllabic or avoided speaking at all when I’d first been brought to Lyle House. However, it had been some time since I’d been like that. Usually, in our sessions I made an honest effort to be upfront with him, if only because Gill had asked me to. 

Davidoff’s smiled faded and he sat forward slightly, being serious. “We encourage friendships among our residents, Derek. We want you to find friends, to feel comfortable here. You’ve been here a long time and still socialize only with Simon. While I understand why the comfort of your foster family is important you, you need to start trying to reach out beyond that.”

I inwardly winced at the word ‘foster’. It was true, of course, that Simon wasn’t my brother by blood. Still, there was something about the way Davidoff said it that made it seem as though a foster family wasn’t the same as a “real” family. Gill always said it as well, of course; calling Dad my foster father and Simon my foster brother. In her case I could put it down to her simply being as precise about that as she was about everything else. With Davidoff, however, it got right up my nose.

“That you have begun attempting to reach out to another resident here is a good thing,” he continued. “But you have to be careful how you go about it. You’re… intimidating. Not just because of your size but because you have a forceful personality. It’s very easy for you to make people uncomfortable and you’ll have to remember that. It might help if you tried to actively try to make yourself… less overpowering.”

_Less of a werewolf,_ I thought.

Not that Davidoff knew why it was that people found me so uncomfortable to be around, what it was about me that made them shiver. He only knew it was there. Attributing it to my size and demeanor made reasonable sense. Gill often said the same. Although she was more upfront about the roll my looks played in it. People were more likely to feel comfortable around good looking people in a way they never would someone like me. Davidoff was too interested in trying to be friends to actually mention the fact that I was ugly, though.

“I know that with your unusual background, finding common ground with your peers isn’t easy. Clearly you’ve never really had a chance to develop the kinds of social skills you’ll need. However, I want to stress that for the time being, I think it’s best that you… back off from the other patients. You’ve started out on the wrong foot clearly and I think it may take a little time for a second overture to be acceptable. Alright?”

I almost sighed with relief. It seemed this part of things was over. All things considered, it could have been a lot worse. 

“Yes, sir.”

He nodded, sitting back, all overly friendly smiles again. I wished he’d stayed serious.

“Now, I’ve had a chance to look over your mood charts but before we go into them in detail, let’s talk about how the last couple of weeks have been for you.”

 

*** * ***

 

By the time I got out of my interminable session with Davidoff, Wang had dismissed class and I found Simon in the media room attempting to get access to his email again. It was pointless with the Net Nanny software they had installed. That was one of the few things around here I hadn’t managed to get around. At least, not without raising warning flags that would have alerted the nurses to fact that the system had been bypassed. I might be good with math and electronics, but I was no hacker.

Not that it really mattered. In truth, he should have shut down this last one already, as we’d cut ties with with that life and town as we had so many others in the past. Besides, I doubted anyone from that life would want to talk to us after what had happened.

After another minute of fruitless effort Simon turned off the monitor with a huff and turned sideways in his chair. Propping one arm on the back and resting his chin against it he look at me. He looked tired, I thought. The last thing I wanted to do was add to that, to give him more to worry about. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a choice. I had to get him worried enough to leave.

“I’ve been thinking,” I told him. “About Liz, about what Chloe said.”

Simon glanced towards the door then clearly dismissed the worry. I’d be able to hear someone coming long before they could hear us and he knew it.

“And?” he asked.

I had to handle this carefully. I had to worry him, had to get him concerned. On the other hand, I couldn’t appear to be jumping to conclusions ahead of the evidence or he would realize I was up to something.

“I’ve been trying to remember what I can about shamans. I don’t actually remember if they can move things around when they are out of their bodies or not.” That much was true, at least. “However, if I’m remembering correctly if they don’t go far they can still have control of their bodies while out of it. So, Chloe’s suggestion isn’t too far fetched there.” That last bit was complete fabrication. I had no idea if they could or not or if I’d ever heard one way or another.

“But you don’t believe it,” Simon supplied, picking up on the reticence in my tone. “Do you think she’s dead then?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. We just don’t have enough to go on. What we do know is that she is somehow coming back to talk to Chloe and seems to have little to no knowledge of where her body is or what has happened to her in the meantime. One thing neither of you seemed to consider, though, is why she had no memory of being taking away from Lyle House when she turned up in the attic.”

“What do you mean?” Simon shifted in his seat to sit up straight.

“When Chloe saw her in the attic she had been gone for several days and yet the last thing she remembered was talking to Chloe in their bedroom about doing a séance. That’s the part that worries me. If she’d dead, if there was an accident on the way to the hospital or something like that, it would make sense. At least, from what little I know of ghosts, which I admit isn’t that much. However, if she is astral projecting she should be aware that she — her body, that is — isn’t in Lyle House any more. She should remember the last several days of her being where ever she is now.”

“Okay,” Simon said slowly, considering. “So that would make it more likely that she’d dead, right?”

“Not necessarily,” I answered. “The other possibility is that she has no memory of the last few days due to heavy amounts of medication.”

“Why would they keep her unconscious for days?” Simon asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Not unconscious,” I corrected. “What if they decided that she was so unstable they needed to give her something extremely strong to counteract what they see as her delusions, particularly seeing as they have taken a violent turn? If they dosed her to the point where she’s confused and disoriented her memories of the last few days would be hazy at best. So, when she gets out of her body and has a clear head again, so to speak, she naturally latches on to the last time she was clear headed, which would be before she was doped up the night they took her away.”

Simon snapped his fingers. “And _that_ would explain why they won’t let anyone call her!” he said. “She’s too out of it to talk to anyone coherently and they don’t want to upset either Chloe or Tori by admitting that Liz is basically a zombie at the moment.”

“It’s a theory,” I cautioned. “But it would fit with the facts. If something they view as delusions don’t stop with medication the answer is to up the dose until they do. In the case of a supernatural, though, that only happens when you’ve dosed them too much to know up from down anymore.”

I left that hanging, allowing him to make the obvious connections to what would happen to Chloe if she was carted off to a hospital. I didn’t bother saying that they’d try other kinds of anti-psychotics and the many different variations thereof before going to anything drastic as as what I was suggesting. What he didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt my plan.

“Like I said, though,” I said after giving him a little time to dwell on that. “We don’t have enough evidence to know what actually happened to Liz. And until we get more evidence all we can really do is speculate.”

Simon opened his mouth to say something but just then I heard Talbot start heading in our direction. I held up my hand and cocked my head toward the door to warn him.

Whatever he’d been going to say was abandoned and when he spoke it was in a practiced tone of light unconcern, as though we’d been sitting here talking about inconsequentialities the whole time. “I’ve been working on building up my reserves in that game, so the next time our armies match up you better watch out, bro.”

“You wish,” I replied easily. “You couldn’t strategize your way out of a paper bag. There’s no way…”

“Boys,” Talbot said, sticking her head around the corner and smiling at us. “It’s time for lunch. You can play games later.”

“Sure,” Simon said and he and I rose to follow her into the dining room.

 

*** * ***

 

After our afternoon break Talbot announced that we were going to have a 'special treat'. Or at least a special treat for everyone who wasn’t me. Instead of the rest of our afternoon classes, Van Dop was taking everyone to the community pool a couple of blocks away for a swim.

Due to the nature of my illness I wasn't allowed out of Lyle House for the little excursions just in case I attacked someone. It pissed Simon off no end but it didn't bother me. They had reason to be concerned, more than they realized as they didn’t know what had happened between Chloe and myself in the basement. I certainly didn’t trust myself beyond these walls. I barely trusted myself within them.

Besides, it wasn't as if they were ever going anywhere I particularly wanted to go. If anything I got every bit as much of a treat as they did in having a quiet house more or less to myself for a few hours. When you have hearing like mine, actual quiet is a rare and precious thing.

Simon grumbled about it as he angrily tossed his swim trunks and a towel into a plastic bag.

“It’s not fair. I mean, you like to swim. Besides they always let Tori go and she’s way more unstable than you are.”

“If she loses her temper she’s only likely to bite someone’s head of in the metaphorical sense,” I commented absently, focused on a book I had to read for English more than on the conversation.

I should have kept my mouth shut. Simon had just picked up his sketchpad to put in his bag, something I was quietly ecstatic about. At my unthinking comment, though, he threw it against the wall with all his strength.

“That’s bullshit!” he shouted, surprising me. Simon was the coldly furious kind, not the sort to shout and throw things. That had always been more my style than his. “You were protecting me! If that kid hadn’t pulled a knife on me nothing would have ever...”

I stood up from my bed, interrupting him.

“And the night before last?” I demanded, my own temper getting the better of me. “You saw the bruises on Chloe’s arm. What about that? What about the fact that I threw her half-way across the laundry room? What’s your excuse for that one? ‘Cause I’d love to hear it. What threat was she to anybody?”

I regretted the words the moment they were out of my mouth. We hadn’t discussed the incident in any detail, hadn’t talked about it at all since the fight out by the shed yesterday.

For two days I had thought about that as little as possible. I didn’t want to think about it now. And I sure as hell didn’t want to talk to my brother about it.  
In some ways the worst part was that I had started to believe I was getting better, that I was making progress toward being safe outside the confines of Lyle House again. I’d honestly believed that all the work I’d been doing with Gill was helping. Being proved wrong had gutted me in a way I was still trying to come to terms with.

I couldn’t understand how or why Chloe had moved passed what had happened as quickly as she had. The evening before as the three of us had sat in this room discussing the nature of what we were, she had been back to snark and quick comebacks. Not a trace of fear in her scent. Even the lingering smell of anxiety that had seemed to cling to her since she’d come to Lyle House had faded as we talked. She’d been comfortable with us.

Today, she had seemed as unfrightened as I’d ever seen her.

She’d been quietly unperturbed by my outbursts of temper this morning while standing in the same room I’d thrown her across only two days before. I couldn’t understand it. I was grateful for it as her not being afraid of me made everything a great deal easier, but I couldn’t understand it.

The last thing I wanted, though, was to talk about any of this with Simon. I wasn’t sure which would be worse, his agreeing that I was dangerous or for him to continue in his blind refusal to see what I was. Either way no good could come from having this conversation.

Simon though, being Simon, didn’t back down. Of course he didn’t. He wouldn’t have been Simon if he had. “That was an accident,” he said firmly, back to his normal kind of cooler anger. “You said so yourself and it’s not like there was any permanent damage. Even Chloe’s okay with it now that she understands about your strength and all.”

I snorted. “And that makes everything better? So if I get mad at her again and leave more bruises it’s okay because she says it is? You know what that kind of thing is called. Dad worked enough cases of it.”

Simon blanched before going red. When he spoke, though, his voice remained steady. “You screwed up once. And yeah, I admit that you screwed up big time. It’s not the same, Derek. You know that you screwed up, that what you did wasn’t good. You didn’t try to hurt her or just didn’t care whether you did or not. I know you, you’ve probably beating yourself up over it ever since it happened. You probably won’t ever let yourself come close to touching her again just in case.”

It was true, of course, I was terrified of hurting her again. I’d never wanted to hurt anybody. It didn’t alter the fact that I had, that I might do so again. That was the part he didn’t — couldn’t — understand. What it was like, knowing every day that you might end up doing something you desperately don’t want to do. Knowing that no matter how much you try, it might not matter because there was a part of yourself that wasn’t human, wasn’t even close. A part of you that was a monster in the purest sense.

“You think you’re the first person ever to make a mistake?” Simon demanded. “Do you remember that time I got sent home from that overnight at my friend’s place?”

Of course, I remembered. Simon had been over at the home of one of his friends on the basketball team and Dad had been called to pick him up at about ten. It seemed they had been goofing around and play punching each other. One guy had been daring the others to punch him in the stomach harder and harder, saying he could take it. Simon punched him just a bit too hard, enough to double him over, just as the guy’s mother had been coming down the stairs to check on them.

“That is not –” I began, but was interrupted.

“Don’t say it’s not the same,” Simon snapped. “It’s not that different. I screwed up that night. Pushed a game too far. I was trying to push it, though. I didn’t mean to cause any damage but...”

“And you didn’t,” I said, but Simon continued to talk over me.

“...I was kinda trying to. I know it was all some macho bullshit game but I was trying to hurt the guy a bit, prove how strong I was. But you? You weren’t trying to hurt anyone. You have never in your life tried to hurt anyone.”

“It doesn’t make it all okay!” I nearly shouted back. “You hurt someone a little without causing any damage when the guy was actually daring you to do exactly what you did and that’s a problem. But I throw someone across the room and do cause damage but that’s perfectly okay because I hadn’t meant to? I’ve hurt two people now because I can’t control my temper...”

“Your strength,” Simon insisted. “Not your temper. You were mad but it’s not like you were so out of your mind with fury that you tried to hurt them. You just don’t know how to control your strength yet. You’ll learn. Dad said...”

“Dad isn’t here!”

Silence fell, heavy and smothering.

I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. 

But they were true. Dad wasn’t here. He hadn’t been here for three months and that was my fault too. No matter what Simon said, it was my fault we had been found. It had been because of what I was that we’d been on the run to begin with and we’d be caught because I couldn’t control it.

“You have to get going,” I said, turning away and tossing the book I’d all but forgotten I was holding on my bed.

My anger had evaporated with my unthinking words and now I just felt sick.

I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. Part of me thought that maybe it really would have be easier if he had been mad at me over what had happened with Chloe after all. Even if he’d looked at me with disgust, or worse, fear, it couldn’t be worse than this. Having him stand there and compare what I’d done two nights ago to some stupid game when he’d been twelve hurt. 

I loved Simon with all my heart, but I just wanted him to go away.

“That isn’t your fault, bro.”

Of course, he knew what I was thinking. He knew me too well not to.

“I have a session with Gill in ten,” was all I said as I left the room.

There was nothing I could say to make Simon understand what it was like, knowing what you could do without even trying. He could never grasp what it was to be afraid of yourself. What it was like to be aware every day that if you weren’t careful this could be the day you killed someone when you hadn’t even meant to hurt them.

Dad wasn’t here to see what I really was. That he’d been the one to be wrong all those years ago when he insisted I wasn’t dangerous. I remembered the lab, the whispers and the fear, remembered the way they looked at me after the other boys were gone. They’d been right and Dad had been wrong.


	13. Chapter 12: And Then There Were Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I thought just Chloe and I stayed behind.”
> 
> “Oh no,” Talbot said. “Tori is here as well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, first things first. I don't see myself as being able to go back to a weekly update any time soon, if ever. There's just too much going on right now. A lot of that is simply because it's summer, the time for vacations and visiting relatives. However, part of it is also because I've been turning my attention more and more to my original fiction. I'm working on my second novel at the moment and that is time consuming. 
> 
> That being said, I have no intention of abandoning this project, I'm determined to finish it. It's just that you're more likely to see updates on a fortnightly basis rather than a weekly one from now on. 
> 
> I hope you're all having a wonderful summer and able to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather. (Or having a cosy winter, if that's the case. *g*)

  
**~ Chapter 12 ~**  
And Then There Were Three

 

“I could try calling your aunt,” Talbot was saying as I came down the stairs.

“No thank you, Mrs. Talbot,” Chloe answered.

“But I don’t want you to miss out on going to the pool,” Mrs. Talbot said, concern clear in her expression. “Perhaps your father…”

But Chloe shook her head. “Honestly, it’s okay.”

“What’s wrong?” Simon asked, having come down the stairs behind me.

“No one thought to pack Chloe’s swimsuit for her when she came here,” Mrs. Talbot explained.

“I really don’t mind staying here,” Chloe insisted.

“Do you want me to stay too?” Simon asked. “Keep you company?”

Chloe gave him a grateful smile but again shook her head. “In all honestly, I would kind of like to have some time just to myself.”

It was a sentiment I could hardly blame her for. I was very much looking forward to the peace when everyone left. I’d keep to my original plans and retreat to my room as soon as my session was over, just in case she wanted to hang out in the media room or something. In all honesty being alone with her wasn’t something that appealed at the moment, especially after my argument with Simon.

I passed by the little group without a glance, heading to Gill’s office.

I’d been even more focused on my sessions over the last couple of days and she’d seemed pleased with my progress. Of course, she didn’t know the full story about my “bothering” Chloe and as I sat down for my session, I again considered telling her everything. I wanted to get her take on where my therapy had gone wrong and what we could do to get me back on track. Maybe when Simon was gone, I’d tell her. I couldn’t afford to be transferred now, not when my plan was going so well. Once Simon was safely away, though... Then I couldn’t help but feel coming clean with her would probably be a good idea. Yeah, it would get me transfered for sure and I hated the idea of having to start over again with a new therapist. Still, I clearly needed more help than I was getting here. Or rather, I needed to be more carefully monitored.

We started off by going over my session with Davidoff, followed by what he’d said regarding my mood charts.

Once we were finished, she folder her hands on her desk and focused her most piercing gaze on me. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked. 

I wasn’t surprised that she’d picked up on the fact that I was upset. Most people wouldn’t have but Gill was a trained observer and what was more, she’d come to know me fairly well over the last few months.

“I fought with Simon before they left,” I told her.

“The same fight as always?”

“Yeah.” I sighed, rubbing my hands over my face. Just being in a situation where I could talk openly about our argument was a relief. “He was getting ready to go and harping on how it wasn’t fair that the others got to go and I didn’t.” 

“And?”

I quickly went through the basics of what had been said and Gill listened without comment. She didn’t take many notes this time but then she didn’t really have to. The argument was more or less the same one we always had when the others were taken somewhere. The only new addition to the age old fight was Simon’s comparing what I’d done to what had happened at that disastrous sleepover. Of course, I told her that the comparison had been made to the event several months ago instead of the altercation with Chloe.

“Derek,” she said, when I’d finished. “Tell me honestly, how you feel about not being allowed to go. Not what you understand in your head but how it makes you feel when they leave and you’re still here? How you felt this afternoon when they walked out that door.”

I stared out the window behind her, the branches of the tree beyond the lacy curtains nearly bare this late in the season. It wasn’t easy to find the right words for the mix of emotions I’d felt. As always, Gill waited patiently for me to find them.

“Relieved mostly,” I said finally. “The biggest problem here for me is the fact that I almost never get any time to myself. I feel... crowded. The chance to have some peace and quiet…” I shrugged. “The fact is that I’d much rather stay here alone then go swimming this afternoon. When the others are out there’s no pressure to socialize or whatever. I can just be alone without anyone giving me crap about it.”

Gill smiled slightly. “I know that for an introvert such as yourself being expected to socialize as much as the staff here advocates can be difficult. I don’t want you isolating yourself completely, you understand. However, I’ll talk to the nurses and see if we can’t make arrangements to allow you to retreat to your room during the day sometimes.”

“That would be really great,” I told her honestly. “I know I have to be around people, that isolating myself isn’t healthy. Still, being around people 24/7 to a bit much, you know?”

“Understood,” Gill said. “You said, you were mostly relieved. What else?”

“Guilty,” I admitted. “I was so glad to see Simon go after we fought but…”

“You felt that it was wrong for you feel that way,” Gill finished for me when I left the thought unfinished.

“I guess,” I admitted, shrugging. “I know it makes sense for me to want some time away from him after a fight but… he’s still my brother, you know? I shouldn’t want him to leave but I did.”

“Of course,” Gill said, scribbling a note in my file. “Anything else?”

I thought about it and shook my head. “Not really. Just relieved and guilty about being relieved.”

“And what about Simon’s comparison?”

I shut my eyes tightly for a moment. “It felt like he’d stabbed me in the gut,” I admitted. “I can’t understand how he could even pretend there was the least similarity.”

I shook my head, looking back at Gill. “In all honestly, I’d rather not talk about that right now. I know that we’ll have to but... Right now, it just too raw. Okay?”

It wasn’t often that I asked to table a subject for later. Since it was so unusual, Gill usually allowed it. She gave me an understanding look.

“Alright, why don’t we move on to a related subject, then. Have you thought about what we talked about before, about why Simon refuses to accept your diagnosis?”

“Yeah,” I admitted unhappily. I’d known we’d eventually come back to this subject at some point. In all honestly, it was something I’d been dreading. Still, at the moment I actually preferred it to talking about Simon’s analogy. “I still don’t know,” I told her, not bothering to hide that I was frustrated. “I mean, I know what Simon thinks, that Dad would just dismiss this whole thing and say that there was nothing wrong with me.”

“You don’t want to believe your foster father wouldn’t have got you help,” she said kindly.

I shut my eyes again. I’d been thinking over this again and again. She was entirely right. I _wanted_ to believe Dad would have realized I needed help. But…

“He didn’t blame me for what happened that day,” I said finally. I couldn’t explain why he thought it was just an accident, a moment of carelessness. A normal human couldn’t have done what I’d done without serious effort and maybe not even then. As always when something skirted too close to what I couldn’t talk about, I choose my words carefully.

“The guy had a knife,” I said finally. “That’s the thing that it came back to for him, I think. He was upset, don’t get me wrong. Really upset. But… he said I was just protecting my brother. That it was all down to fear and adrenaline.”

“So, that you weren’t actively to blame,” Gill clarified.

“Not actively,” I agreed. “But he disappeared the _next day_.” I leaned slightly forward, focused on that one fact. “Like I said, there was no opportunity for him to even begin to deal with what happened…”

“Derek,” Gill interrupted. “You know as well as I do that twenty-four hours is long enough for him to give some indication of how he viewed the incident. You said that he made it clear that because of the knife you were, if not justified, at least not entirely at fault for the results. Is that not, right?”

“Yes.” I leaned back again, looking away.

“So, he didn’t view your response to the situation as the problem,” she pressed.

“It’s not that he didn’t think it was a problem,” I objected. “There was a kid in hospital, he knew it was a problem.”

“But?” Gill pressed, not allowing me any room to sidestep the issue. “Tell me honestly, do you think that Simon may be right, that your foster father would not have seen your need for psychiatric help?”

She waited as I fought my internal battle.

Christopher Bae had saved me in every possible way. He’d given me a home and a family when no one else wanted me, treated me like a human being when to everyone else I was little better than an animal. He’d given me unconditional love and never once treated me as anything less than his son. I looked up to him as I looked up to no one else. I’d always trusted him, from the first time he took my hand and led me out into the world beyond the lab. He’d never once let me down. Never. I couldn’t believe he would have let me down in this, I couldn’t. Except…

When I finally spoke it was little more than a whisper. “Yes, I think Simon’s right.” It seemed to tear something inside to say the words. To admit that truth. “I don’t think Dad would have seen me as sick.”

The room was silent for a moment as I stared at the floor, fighting a sudden urge to cry.

“Derek,” Gill said finally, her voice soft and kind. “I know how hard this is for you to admit. But do you understand why it’s important for you to accept that? Both for understanding how Simon feels but also for yourself?”

I didn’t look up, feeling beaten down. “I get the first bit but not the second,” I answered.

“In all our time working together you’ve talked a great deal about your foster father. There is no doubt that he is a good man who loves you and has clearly done his best by you. But, Derek, he is only a man. You’ve put him up on this pedestal of perfection and that’s not fair to either of you. What’s more, we have to face the reality that there would have been warning signs that something was wrong long before that day on the playground. Signs he didn’t see or chose to ignore. Mental illnesses like yours don’t crop up overnight. This would have been in you from the beginning, possibly since you were a small child.”

I stayed silent because I couldn’t think of anything to say. Was it really possible that there had been warning signs before that day? Warning signs that Dad either hadn’t seen or didn’t understand? I hated the thought. It seemed disloyal to even consider it.

“We’ve talked about some of them,” Gill went on. “Your social isolation, your inability to form any bonds outside your immediate family. The disregard you felt for your schoolmates. These are all red flags that something isn’t right. And there were likely other signs. I’m not saying he didn’t do his best by you, but the fact is that you’ve needed help for a long time. What happened that day might have been able to be avoided all together if your foster father had had you in therapy before that day.”

I shut my eyes tightly, trying to think of some way to refute what she was saying, to argue that Dad had worried about these things. He’d known they were a problem. Still, the fact was that he’d never once mentioned even the possibility of getting someone for me to talk to. And while that would have been difficult considering what I was and the way we moved around all the time, I knew it wasn’t impossible. 

Gill allowed me to sit in silence for a few minutes before she went on, voice back to her usual cool professionalism. “We’ll revisit this subject later,” she said. “For now, though, I think it’s best that we move on. Her tone helped to bring me back out of my thoughts and I was immensely grateful for that. I wasn’t ready to deal with this farther and Gill knew me well enough to know it.

“So,” she continued, as I finally forced myself to look up at her. “Let’s talk about how you handled your tempter during your argument with Simon this afternoon.”

 

*** * ***

 

After my session I had planned to retreat to my room. I’d been completely honest with Gill. I was definitely feeling over peopled and after our session I needed the time to myself to regroup more than usual. The memory of my fight with Simon ached as did the the thoughts about Dad that Gill had running around in my head. All I wanted was some time alone; to clear my head so I could start planning what to do next about getting Simon out of here. That was all that mattered right now. The rest could wait. And frankly, I wasn’t anywhere near ready to consider the possibilities Gill had raised. Not yet. So, it was with a real relief that I pushed it all aside for now.

Things were progressing fairly well but I wanted to get Simon out of here as soon as possible. Luckily, I didn't think it was going to take too much more to convince Simon that Chloe needed the kind of help that only someone like Dad could get her. There would be a little trouble over the fact that I was even more determined than ever to stay. Still, when weighed against what could happen to Chloe if he didn't go, Simon would hopefully admit that I could take care of myself for a little while, long enough for him to find Dad anyway.

I ran into Talbot in the hall on my way to the boy’s side stairs.

“It’s unusual to have more than one of you here when the others go out,” she said, in that attempting to be kind but clearly nervous way she always spoke on the rare occasions when we were alone together. I hated it and feeling as raw as I did, it grated more than usual. Talbot was afraid of me, always had been. She wanted to be friendly, probably even wanted to like me. She was that kind of person. Somehow that made her fear all the more of a slap in the face. It probably didn’t help that I was nearly a whole head taller than her. “The girls seem content to stay in their rooms for now,” she continued. “But the others will be gone for a while. I know we don’t usually allow you to watch movies during the day but if the three of you decide later that you’d like to watch one that would be alright.”

Wait... three?

“I thought just Chloe and I stayed behind.”

“Oh no,” Talbot said. “Tori is here as well.”

The phone started ringing in the office at that point and as Gill had left as soon as my session with her was over that just left Talbot to answer it. She hurried off into the office, leaving me to absorb her news.

Queen Victoria was usually the first in line to get out of Lyle House for any reason or no reason at all. So why would she stay? She hated it here. The only reason I could think of for her not to go was that Chloe hadn’t gone. Tori’s intense dislike for Chloe hadn’t diminished, if anything it had increased if the death glares she sent Chloe’s way were anything to go by.

Making sure Talbot was immersed in her phone call I headed up the girl’s stairs to check on Chloe. 

Scent told me which room was Chloe and Rachelle’s and determining which side was whose was obvious on sight. Rachelle's side was a mess, wall covered in pictures, dresser covered in tubes of lip gloss and other girly things, most of which I couldn’t identify. Chloe's side, on the other hand, was fairly neat with few personal effects besides a very old and warn stuffed Koala. Likely a childhood holdover.

Chloe’s bed was made but slightly rumpled as if she had lain down on top the covers sometime after making it that morning. Her iPod lay abandoned on those covers and she herself was nowhere to be seen.

Moving silently farther down the hall I peered around the partially open door of the room Tori now had to herself. She lay on her bed, eyes closed and earbuds in her ears. I could just hear a wisp of music from them. She’d taken a shower at some point since the others had left and she’d laid a towel over her pillow to keep it from getting wet.

Heading back downstairs it took very little time to determine that Chloe wasn’t on the first floor either. Talbot was still in the office and I could hear occasional the turning of pages now. When the others were out she often took advantage of the quiet to read.

One glance out the back window was enough to assure me that Chloe wasn't there, even if I couldn’t tell that the alarm on the back door was still engaged. Besides, Talbot had thought that she was in her room and you couldn’t get out into the yard unless one of the nurses let you out. Unless you were me, of course. I seriously doubted that Chloe had the technical knowledge to bypass the alarm system.

Standing in the downstairs hallway I looked round reflexively, even though I knew no one was there, before I knelt down for a good sniff. I hated using my enhanced sense of smell like this, like I was some kind of dog. It wasn’t easy to pick out clear trails in a house where the same few people lived day in and day out. Following Chloe was particularly hard as only that day she had been on all three floors already. However, when I found a recent scent of Tori’s heading into the basement...

Tori never went down there unless more or less ordered by the nurses to help with the laundry, something that hadn’t happened in several days.

The basement was empty when I got down there. I could smell Tori as well as Simon, Chloe and myself from earlier. Tori’s scent, however, headed directly to that damn closet.

From behind it came a muffled scream.


	14. Chapter 13: The Crawlspace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I couldn't see them well... I was glad of that. I didn't want to see this any better."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone. I'm guessing you thought I'd probably given up on this.
> 
> I'm sorry about the long hiatus. I suffer by bi-polar disorder. Normally, with my medications, I'm okay. However, this last year I had the most severe drop I have had in a long time. I was barely able to function at all and writing was out of the question. 
> 
> However, I'm finally back on my feet again and I am committed to finishing this thing. 
> 
> I am still in need of a beta readers, however.

  
**~ Chapter 13 ~**  
The Crawlspace

The scream was muffled as if by more than just the closed door of the closet and there was a note of absolute terror to it that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

I wrenched the closet open. The hatch into the crawlspace was closed and latched but there was little doubt that the sound had come from there. There was a scent in the air now, coming from the crawlspace. Something musty and rotten that turned my stomach. I could smell both Chloe and Tori as well. Here in the closet, where few people went and there was no airflow the smells were easier to follow. Tori’s headed into the crawlspace and then back out. Chloe’s only headed in.

Opening the trap door I pulled myself inside, squinting down the low roofed space waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Once I was inside, the stench of urine and sweat and fear was almost enough to mask the underlying odor of death and decay. I began breathing through my mouth but it wasn't much of an improvement. I could almost taste the scents they were so strong.

One of my few “superpowers” that was actually more of boon than a curse was extremely good night vision. However, when my eyes adjusted enough that I could make out the figures farther down the tunnel I almost wished that I couldn’t.

Chloe was only a little ways down the passage. Her back was pressed against a wooden support beam and she seemed frozen. There was tape over her mouth, a makeshift gag muffling the screams that had now become little more than choked whimpers. A matchbook was clutched in one hand and a couple of burnt matches lay on the floor beside her. She'd used them and seen what was farther down the passage and coming closer. I couldn't see them well. I had great night vision but I still needed some light and what little came into the passage from the open trapdoor behind me didn’t penetrate far. I was glad of that. I didn't want to see this any better.

There were two of them. The bodies had decayed to the point that there was little left of them besides bone covered by scraps of desiccated muscle, tendon, and cloth. They were pulling themselves along by their fingers, the one in front reaching toward Chloe.

For a moment, I was as frozen as she was by the horror of those... those things. Things that had once been people.

Then one reached out. The leg of Chloe's jeans had ridden up and the thing rapped its bony fingers around the bare skin of her ankle. Chloe's whimpers cut off and she went wild, kicking out at the thing frantically. Her foot made contact with its head and there was the snap of breaking bone. Terror was giving her strength but robbing her of thought. She was going to pulverize the damn thing and probably hurt herself in the process. The knowledge that that wouldn't stop what was happening got me moving.

"Chloe!" I yelled. "Chloe stop!"

She tore at her gag but her hands were shaking too hard to get a grip on the tape. She turned and began crawling away from the horrors behind her as fast as she could; the ceiling of the crawlspace being too low for even someone as small as she was to stand.

The zombies hissed, the clicking of their bones as they struggled forward unnaturally loud in the confined space.

"Chloe! Stop." I scrambled forward, my usual economy of movement deserting me. "It's –"

I didn't get a chance to say anymore. She saw a form in front of her, doubtless little more for her than a barely visible silhouette against the feeble light filtering in from the laundry room beyond the closet. In the darkness and her fear she had no idea who I was. She kicked out at me with the same fear driven strength. She hit my side and I hissed in pain.

"Chloe!" I grabbed her arm and then grabbed the other as she tried to take a swing at me. "Chloe, it's me. Derek."

She froze for half a second before going boneless, falling against me. I caught her, pulling her closer to me and away from what chased her. She was shaking almost convulsively, her face streaked with dirt and tears. I pulled the tape off her mouth and she gasped. Twine was still wrapped around one wrist and I could see more of it farther down the crawlspace. Tied up, I thought blankly. Tori. It could only have been Tori.

I knew she didn’t like Chloe but why would she...

Chloe pulled herself away from me, trying to get control of herself. "Th-th-there's –" She was too upset to control her stutter enough to get even one word out. She looked back down the tunnel.

"Dead people," I said, shuddering inwardly. It was work to keep my voice calm and I realized that I’d begun to tremble myself. "I know. They must have been buried down here. You accidentally raised them."

How, I had no idea. I knew necromancers could raise zombies, call the spirits of the dead back into the bodies they’d once inhabited and control them. It was one of the less pleasant sides of their abilities and something not often done. Even most necros were horrified by it. The fact was though that I’d thought there had to be a whole complicated ceremony and special supplies needed in order to raise the dead. Apparently, I’d been wrong, because these were clearly zombies and Chloe was the only necromancer around here. I'd worry about the how later.

"R-r-raised –" she started.

"Later. Right now, you need to lay them again." Her eyes were glazed over with fear and she didn't seem to hear me. "Chloe, focus!"

In the dread of the moment I didn’t think twice about grabbing her forearms, forgetting entirely my fear of hurting her inadvertently. I pulled around her to face me and not them. It was all I could do to resist the urge to shake her. Instead I drew her closer to me again, as though I could somehow shield her from the situation. I knew she was horrified, so was I. But she was the only one who could stop this. I wished I knew more about necromantic rituals, knew anything about them really, so I could give her some idea about how to lay the dead she’d somehow raised. But I didn't. All I could do was try to get Chloe calm enough to figure out how to undo what she'd done.

Her eyes focused properly for the first time since I found her, her gaze fixing on my face. "They won't hurt you," I told her. "They aren't brain-eating movie zombies, okay? They're just dead bodies with their spirits returned to them."

I saw her eyes widen in shock and I wondered what she'd thought they were. But instead of sending her back into hysterics, it seemed to help her to focus.

"I-I-I need to send them back." Her voice was too high, the panic not far away but at least she was able to speak.

"Yeah, that'd be the general idea."

She took a deep breath and rubbed her hands over her face, streaking it with even more dirt that turned to mud where it encountered her tears. I knew she was fifteen and not a little kid but it was hard to remember when she was covered in dirt and trembling in fear.

I took a deep breath forcing myself to breathe slowly. I had to hold it together. I'd never wanted to run from anything in my life so much as I wanted to run from those things. Not because they could hurt me. I knew they couldn't. Even if Chloe ordered them to attack me there wasn't much two mostly rotted corpses could do against a werewolf. At least, I didn’t think there was. Still, the thought of them touching me, touching her, made my gorge rise.

"O-okay," she said. "So how do I send them back?"

She was asking me? She was the necromancer, she was the one who summoned them in the first place.

"Derek?" There was a hint of desperation in her voice and in her eyes and she looked up at me.

I always had the answers or at least a good idea of where to start. I always had a plan. In the few days we’d known each other Chloe had grasped that much and now she was looking to me for help.

"I... I don't know," I told her, hating how helpless I suddenly felt. I was so far out of my depth here that I didn’t even know where to start. I fought back the edge of panic yet again and rolled my shoulders, trying to pull myself back together. "You summoned them, Chloe. Whatever you did, undo it. Reverse it."

"I didn't do –" she started.

"Just try." There was more snap to my voice than I intended, my own fear showing through in spite of how hard I tried to keep it contained.

Instead of responding, Chloe just closed her eyes tightly. "Go back," she said, her voice trembling and more that of a child and teenager. "Back to your afterlife. I release you." She repeated the words over and over again, her eyes screwed tight. On each repetition she sounded a little firmer, a little less like a little girl. Sweat began to bead on her forehead as she focused all her energy on this one thing, on undoing what she hadn’t even realized she’d done. I focused on her, watching her face and trying not to hear the scratching of bone against bone and the hissing of the zombies as they continued to pull themselves toward the necromancer who'd called them.

Suddenly Chloe's voice gave out and her eyes popped open, the terror back as the leading zombie reached her again.

"Shit." My hands tightened around her arms involuntarily as she began shaking again. It was there, right behind her. Its empty sockets fixed on the back of Chloe's head.

"Keep your eyes closed, Chloe. Just remember, they won't hurt you." I wanted to pull her away, out of its reach, as the thing reached toward her. But there was no point in running and nowhere to run too. They wouldn't – couldn't – hurt the necromancer who'd called them. I was sure of that much if nothing else. We had to stop this, here and now. Leading these things out into the laundry room wasn’t an option.

Chloe jumped as a bony fingertip touched her elbow.

"It's okay, Chloe. I'm right here. Keep going."

She held herself absolutely still as fingers slid along her arm. The thing’s eyes were long gone and I guessed that meant it couldn't see her. So, it was feeling her, learning her by touch. She closed her eyes again forcing herself to breathe deeply and slowly. It took me a minute to realize that she was matching my breaths. Probably using the sound of my breathing to keep herself from thinking about what it was that was poking at her, plucking at the fabric of her t-shirt and jeans.

I carefully slowed my breathes just a bit more and for a few endless moments, as the zombies crept closer, we breathed in unison.

Chloe gritted her teeth, her hands balling into fists as she fought to get control and keep it. Sweat bathed her face but her shaking stopped and her breathing became even and calm. The zombie hesitated in its plucking as though uncertain.

"That's right," I said softly. "Keep going, you're doing fine." I didn't know if she could even hear me at this point but just sitting there, unable to do a damn thing while a dead thing plucked at her... If mumbling meaningless encouragements was all I could do, I would do it.

Chloe's face smoothed out and wherever she was, it wasn't here in this dirt crawlspace. It would have worried me if the first one and then the other of the zombies hadn’t began to slow their movements. The one farther down the passage simply laid back down on the floor while the first one sagged against Chloe's side.

Finally, they stopped moving all together. After they’d been still for almost a full minute I spoke.

'They're gone, Chloe," I whispered. I had to say it several times before she responded, her eyes finally opening. She looked a little dazed and drained enough to fall over where she knelt.

She twisted sideways too look and the body leaning against her collapsed to the dirt floor, lifeless again. I finally let go of her arms and ran my hands through my hair letting out a long breath. For a moment we just stayed where we were. Chloe staring down at the body beside her, me watching her face to see if she was going to go into shock or something.

"Are you okay?" I asked finally.

"I'll live." Her voice was barely a whisper but it was the voice of a teenager again and not a child.

I took another deep breath. I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of here and pretend that none of this had ever happened. Unfortunately, that wasn't an option. When I looked back down the crawlspace I could just make out the shallow graves these bodies had dug themselves out of.

I frowned down at the corpse beside Chloe. "Guess we've got some work to do."

Chloe looked up at me, still looking dazed. "What?" she asked.

I studied her face. It would be easier if I didn't have to do this by myself but she'd be more hindrance than help if she was going to fall apart on me.

"The nurses will notice a couple of corpses down here when they next come to look at the accounts. And that's trouble we don't need. We have to re-bury them."

For a moment I thought she would fall apart. She seemed to sway on her knees. Then she shut her eyes and took a deep breath and then another. I could almost see her steeling herself for what had to be done. Not for the first time, I found myself impressed by her.

When she opened her eyes they were still weary but determined. "Let's get it over with."

* * *

The graves were shallow, barely more than a few inches of dirt over the bodies which made the whole thing easier.

The bodies weren’t new. They’d been down there long enough to mostly decompose. While I wasn’t a forensics expert or anything my guess would be a couple of decades at least. So, they were from well before Lyle House was a group home. Probably from back in the days when this was a private home. So, nothing to do with us. One less thing to worry about.

“I’d only been in my room for maybe ten minutes or so when Tori showed up,” Chloe was saying as we worked. “She said that she wanted to call a truce in this feud of ours. I don’t understand where she gets the idea that I have anything against her. I’ve never done anything to her but she thinks I’m out to get her.”

I shrugged. “She’s unstable. It’s why she’s here.”

“No kidding. Apparently she was supposed to have gone home this next Monday but she won’t now because she told everyone about me seeing ghosts. And being Tori, she’s blaming _me_ for that. She said that she wanted me to tell the nurses that I blew the whole thing out of proportion; that she apologized for it and has been super nice to me ever since.”

I snorted.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Anyway, if I agreed to do that she said she’d show me what was in the crawlspace.” She suddenly looked slightly embarrassed. “I guess you were right about Rae and me being too noisy about trying to get into the closet.”

I didn’t bother commenting.

“She said that there was an old jewelery box down here. That Brady had found it and showed it to her hoping she’d be impressed.”

That, I had to admit, was clever. Brady had been gone for a few weeks now but he’d been the show off type and if he had found something like that, trying to impress one of the girls with it was exactly the kind of thing he’d do.

“Brady never got into the crawlspace,” I said. “He never even managed to get the closet door open. Though not for lack of trying. He just never found the keys.”

“Well, I didn’t know,” Chloe said, sounding far too warn out for there to be any snap in the words. “She said that I’d never find it on my own but that she’d show me if I wanted. The only thing was that it had to be right then so that she could shower off the dirt before the others got back. Since she obviously didn’t want the nurses to see her covered in dirt an all.”

Again, not bad. Tori was smarter than I’d given her credit for. And a hell of a lot crazier. If we hadn’t been in the middle of trying to bury a couple of decades old dead bodies I might have gone upstairs and done something that really would have got me transferred.

The problem was that Chloe was too trusting.

“After we got in here she said to look behind one of the wooden pillar-things and when my back was to her she must have hit me with something. I don’t remember anything after that before coming to all tied up with tape over my mouth.”

Oh shit.

“Hold on,” I said. “Let me check your head.”

Chloe only hesitated a moment before allowing me to find the small bump on the back of her head. It wasn’t large. She squirmed slightly when I started staring into her eyes but the pupils were both the same size and seemed to be responding reasonably to the amount of light in the tunnel.

“No sign of a concussion,” I told her, still carefully exploring the bump. She winced a little and I withdrew my hands from her hair.

I got back to hauling the second body back to its grave to hide the fact that my hands were shaking again, this time from anger. I wanted to yell at Chloe for being so stupid as to trust Tori but the fact was that even I was shocked by just how far Tori had gone.

She’d knocked Chloe out, she’d tied her up, gagged her, closed the crawlspace entrance and the closet door.... and then went upstairs to listen to music as if everything was perfectly normal. And here I thought I was the most dangerous one here. Tori was out of her mind. She could have killed Chloe. By gagging her alone she could have suffocated her and there was no way she could have known how much damage she’d done when she’d knocked Chloe out.

The realization of just how close Chloe may have come to dying just by that bit alone, never mind what might have happened if I hadn’t come looking for her, left me staggered.

“And after that?” I asked, wanting to focus on something other than Victoria Enright.

“That ghost was back,” Chloe said, seemly glad to have the medical examination over with. “I couldn’t see him, could barely hear him. He kept cutting in and out. He said something about someone coming for me. He must have known that you were looking for me because he seemed pretty anxious for me to summon these ghosts first.”

The idea that there had been some ghost watching me while I literally sniffed Chloe out wasn’t a comforting one.

“I think...” she paused. “I’m not sure but I think I heard him yell something like ‘not so hard’ or something like that. Then I started hearing the...” She stopped and I didn’t encourage her to continue.

“So, you pulled too hard and that’s how you raised them?” I asked, more to myself than to her.

Chloe shrugged. “I guess. I mean...” She stopped then and looked at me. “Derek, what exactly did I do to these people? I mean, did I just reanimate corpses or...” she trailed off again. Her face having gone so pale I was almost worried she’d faint on me after all.

I knew what she wanted to hear, that they were just moving corpses and nothing more but there was no point in trying to sugar-coat the truth. She had to know sooner or later. I stopped as well and looked at her.

“You brought the people back,” I told her bluntly. “When a necromancer raises a zombie they summon their souls back from... wherever souls go after they die – I don’t know much about that part – but they bring them back and put them back in their bodies.”

Her eyes shimmered but the tears didn’t fall. Somehow that was almost worse than if she’d actually started crying. “Those were real people then. I put real people into decayed...” She swallowed hard and closed her eyes. She was still for a moment then got back to work, saying nothing.

I let the silence stretch as we finished. As the graves had been fairly shallow to begin with and the bodies didn’t actually fall apart as we put them back in, it didn’t take too long. I let Chloe have as long to think as I could.

For the first time felt a kind of kinship with Chloe. I’d never thought of us has having anything in common other than, just maybe, Simon. Sure we were both supernaturals, but our races were so different that it was hard to think of us as even having that much in common.

Of course, the ghosts she’d accidentally hurt were now back where they belonged again, past any pain if all people wanted to believe about the afterlife was true, while the boy I’d hurt was still alive and suffering. Still, I knew the bitter taste of guilt she was experiencing, the realization of just how much harm we could cause others simply because of what we were.

As we were finishing though, the topic of most importance couldn’t be ignored any more.

“What do you think we should do about Tori?” I asked. I had several ideas but it seemed fair to let Chloe have her say first.

"Nothing," she said firmly, her voice steadier than her hands as she tried to wipe the grave dirt from it.

"Huh?" For a moment, I was sure she’d either misunderstood the question or I hadn’t understood her answer.

"I'm going to act like nothing happened," Chloe said, still looking down at the grave instead of up at me.

I didn’t like it. The idea of Tori getting away with something like this pissed me off but my temper had cooled while we worked and I could see where Chloe was going with this. Yes, she had the bump on the back of her head but I’d already taken the remains of the strings used to tie her up off. And the last thing we wanted was any of the nurses looking too closely at all the disturbance down here. There was always the possibility that they’d find the remains. So, really it would be Chloe’s word against Tori’s and since Tori, unlike me, did not have a history of violent behavior the whole thing might get nasty. Besides, how were we going to explain why Chloe had let Tori lure her into the crawlspace in the first place, never mind how I’d come to find her.

There was, I considered, another side to the whole event. In fact, Victoria might actually turn out to be helpful. Here was one more threat to Chloe that I could use to convince Simon that he had to go. For that to work though that threat still had to be in place. Taking it to the nurses might naturalize that threat by having Tori transfered. As it was, when Simon found out what had happened here... Yes, doing nothing could play right into my plans.

Finally, I nodded. "Yeah. If you blame her, things will only escalate. Better to ignore her and hope she gives up." I might not like it on a visceral level, but it made sense on several practical levels.

"Pray she gives up," Chloe muttered as we finally — _finally_ — headed for the hatch and the world outside. A world that didn’t stink of fear and death.

"Is there still clean clothing down here?" I wondered aloud, looking at both of us and knowing that if either of us were seen trying to get to our rooms looking like this – dirt covered and disheveled – there would be some serious questions asked.

"One load in the dryer,” she answered. “That's it. Why –? Oh, right. Better not to go upstairs covered in dirt." She climbed down the ladder ahead of me still talking. "Most of what's in the dryer was yours so –"

As I pulled myself out of the crawl space the scents hit me too late to warn Chloe.

"Chloe? Derek?" It was Talbot, standing in the laundry room. "What are you two doing together? Derek, you know you're not supposed to –" There was no way out but one and as we stepped out of the closet she got a good look at us. "Dear Lord, what happened to you?"


	15. Chapter 14: On Trial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Whatever else happened, I couldn’t allow my own feelings to get in the way of my plan. No matter what I felt... I couldn’t allow it to matter."

  
**~ Chapter 14 ~**  
On Trial

Adrenalin is strange stuff. With enough of it grannies can lift cars and asthmatics can run a mile. Fight or flight allows us to do what should be impossible.

Still, it isn’t until it begins to wear off that things really get weird. The draining of it from the system can lead to all kinds of odd side-effects from shaking hands and fainting to outbursts of extreme emotional responses.

I was fairly dirt covered but Chloe was caked with the stuff, a lot of it in her extremely tangled hair. Talbot stared at us as though we had lobsters crawling out of our ears. And suddenly, that was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. I knew if I opened my mouth I’d start laughing and once I started I very much doubted I’d be able to stop. Even hearing someone else coming down the stairs behind her, knowing we were about to be in a huge amount of trouble, had no effect. If anything it make me want to laugh even more.

“I was doing laundry,” Chloe said suddenly, her voice just a bit too high. “And D-Derek came down, looking for –“

Gill came in behind Talbot her lips pursing in a way I recognized as her ‘I smell bullshit’ look. Chloe started slightly when she saw her and trailed off.

“Go on, Chloe,” Gill said.

This isn’t funny. This is not funny, I told myself. The laughter bubbling up inside didn’t believe me. It thought this was freaking hilarious.

“H-he wanted his shirt,” Chloe continued, her words a little slower now as she picked her way carefully through the lie. Not that it mattered. Everyone could tell she was lying. She had to be one of the worse liars I’d ever seen and at the moment that was funny, too. “I-I asked about stain stud, because I couldn't find any and I opened the closet to look, and Derek said it was usually l-locked. We f-found the ladder and the crawl sp-space and we were curious.”

“Oh, I bet you were curious.” Gill crossed her arms and shot me a look. There was something in that look, in her tone…

No.

No. Way.

She couldn’t think… 

Remembering our rather uncomfortable talk when I’d realized she was trying to get me to admit some kind of interest in Chloe, though, I knew exactly what she thought two teenagers would have been doing in a crawlspace that would have ended with Chloe covered in dirt and her hair a mess.

I knew I’d be bothered by the disappointed look she gave me later.

“Kids your age are very curious, aren't they?” she continued.

“I-I guess so,” Chloe said. The penny still hadn’t dropped for her. “We were exploring –“ 

“I bet you were,” Gill interrupted.

Finally, Chloe seemed to catch on. She went bright red as Gill continued. “I should have realized there would be further problems between you too but I hadn’t expected anything quite this dramatic.”

Chloe began to stammer increasingly wild excuses, some of them barely coherent as her stutter grew worse. 

If Gill thought that this was dramatic I wondered what she’d think if she knew what we’d really been up to. The thought was nearly enough to send me over the edge. No matter how much I told myself this wasn’t funny, it didn’t seem to matter.

So, all I could do was keep my mouth shut. Laughing like a lunatic wouldn’t help. Besides, Chloe was digging us both in deep enough on her own and the last thing I wanted was anyone deciding to go looking in that crawlspace right now.

The more I thought about it the more simultaneously funnier and more embarrassing the idea that they thought any girl would willingly roll around in the dirt with me of all people got. Chloe was obvious horrified by the idea. I had a feeling that if she’d been with any other guy she might have tried to play it off, allow the suggestion that we’d been fooling around to stand. Perhaps that should have been insulting. I mean had just rescued her, calmed her enough to send back the zombies she’d accidentally raised from the dead and then helped her re-bury them.

Wasn’t there something about a true friend being one who’d help you bury the bodies?

After all we’d been through in the last hour she was honestly appalled by the idea that people thought we might have fooled around a bit? I mean, really?

It took several minutes for me to get a hold of myself. By which time the damage had already been done well past my ability to repair it.

As my brain started actually functioning again, though, I realized how useful this little misunderstanding could be. This was the second time Chloe had got into serious trouble. Granted, being found supposedly fooling around with a boy wasn’t the same as being caught talking to ghosts in the attic in the middle of the night. Still, it was just the kind of thing I could use to ratchet up both her and Simon’s fears of Chloe being transferred. Add the violent turn Tori’s obsession had taken and maybe I could get Simon out of here within a day or two. So as I calmed, I decided to continue keeping my mouth shut and let Chloe continue to dig us in all the deeper with her embarrassed denials. Besides, I could tell they’d made up their minds and didn’t think anything I said would change them.

Finally, we were both allowed to return to our rooms to shower and change – which, by that point, was all I really wanted out of life.

Once in the shower, I finally allowed myself to laugh. It was just so ridiculous. The juxtaposition alone was hard to wrap my head around. On one side was the severity of what Tori had done and the raising of a couple of dead bodies, which Chloe and I dealt with in a surprisingly calm manner. Never mind the fact that we’d probably also uncovered a couple of unsolved murders. People dying of natural causes didn’t generally end up buried in crawlspaces under a private residences. Putting that against the absolute shock and horror with which the adults around here treated the idea of such a normal event as two teenagers making out made for a very incongruous picture.

I leaned against the wall of shower and let it out. I didn’t often laugh like this and after the last three months it felt good, cathartic.

Unfortunately, the laughter didn’t last all that long and as it dissipated my amusement seemed to wash down the drain with the dirt from the crawlspace. It was still kind of funny in a sick and sad way, but I couldn’t laugh at it any more.

The intensity of the embarrassment that came in the wake of the laughter was something of a surprise. I generally didn’t care what other people thought of me. Still, it wasn’t every day that people thought you’d beer rolling around in the dirt with your brother’s girl. Well, not if you’re me anyway. I knew they weren’t official or anything but there was a great deal of liking going on and that, in my mind, made her Simon’s. Fast on the heels of that was annoyance and, if I was honest, more than a bit of hurt. After three months of working with me I would have honestly thought Gill knew me better than this, thought better of me than this. 

I wasn’t bothered by what Talbot thought. She didn’t know me. Despite living in the same house for three months she’d never made the smallest attempt to get to know me. She was distantly kind but that was all. So, her assumptions didn’t bother me.

Gill, on the other hand, was different. I talked to her for at least an hour every day, working through my problems and my thought processes. While there was a lot I couldn’t tell her I was dedicated enough to getting better to be as honest with her as I could. She wasn’t Dad or Simon and there were limits to what I could share with her. Still, I’d come to trust her to a certain extent and to honestly believe she wanted to help me. 

As a result, the look of anger and disappointment she’d given me hurt in a way nothing Talbot could say or do ever could. And the fact that she hadn’t even given me the benefit of the doubt hurt even more. Then again, I supposed it was a sign of her regard for me that she even thought it possible that Chloe, or any girl for that matter, would actually be willing to make out with me. She saw me as a teenage boy a girl might actually go for. The idea seemed pretty ridiculous to me but apparently not to her. It was an oddly warming thought even in the wake of how upset I was that she thought I would.

When I got back downstairs I was put in the dining room to wait for whatever came next. They’d called someone to come and talk to Chloe and wanted me out of the way while that was going on.

I heard the others get back and the bombard of questions as Simon and Rachelle was ushered quietly up to their rooms with nothing but the information that something had happened 

Not long after, Chloe came storming out of Gill’s office. A woman hurried out into the hall after her, trying to get her to talk to her but Chloe refused. I couldn’t see them from where I sat but I could hear them well enough.

“Chloe, honey, you need to calm down,” she said. “I know this is all confusing. It always is the first time a boy takes an interest and I do want to hear your side of this. But you have to understand that just because he’s the first one doesn’t mean that you can’t do so much better.”

It was obvious the woman, whoever she was, believed what Talbot and Gill had decided had happened. The last of my humor with the situation drained away as I listened to the woman continue to try to get Chloe to talk to her while clearly not being interested in hearing what she had to say.

At that moment, I honestly felt bad for Chloe. I knew for a fact that Dad would have laughed in their faces before taking me aside to find out what had really happened. Of course, with Dad it would have been easy. I could have explained about the zombies and everything would have be fine, at least between us. Obviously, Chloe couldn’t exactly be so forthcoming but it had to suck when your own family wouldn’t believe you over others. It reminded me again of just how lucky I’d been when Dad decided to take me in.

I was glad of that since the thought gave me the strength of determination to get through the rest of this. Whatever else happened, I couldn’t allow my own feelings to get in the way of my plan. No matter what I felt – and was starting to be more than a bit ticked – I couldn’t allow it to matter.

It wasn’t easy, though, now. Okay, it must be worse for Chloe to have everyone thing she’d been “exploring” with someone like me but it was apparent that I was, as always, being cast as the villain. I was the boy so obviously it was my hormones that were really at fault. Chloe had never even had a boyfriend before so of course I was the one who masterminded the whole thing and went about taking advantage of an emotionally disturbed girl. The fact that I was also here because I’d been diagnosed with a mental illness and, like her, had zero history with dating apparently didn’t factor into it.

So, they had decided that I’d somehow lured poor, innocent Chloe down there. While she was at fault for going along with me, I had to have been the instigator who bore most of the blame.

As usual, I was an easy scapegoat. I looked the part and had no parent to step in and defend me.

It was both insulting and demeaning to us both. While I’d never been able to stand a girl long enough to even have one as a friend, much less anything else, I knew myself well enough to know that if I did like a girl that way, luring her into a dirt crawlspace would not be how I’d got about things. I had more sense than that, if nothing else. And I’d like to think that I’d have a hell of a lot more respect for her.

Now, when I’d had time to calm down and think I found that I did want to defend myself, at least to Gill. I had honestly thought she understood me better than this and I didn’t want her to see me as some kid with more hormones than good sense. I couldn’t though. Because getting Simon out to find Dad was what had to come first. Even over the increasingly gut-churning mix of anger and embarrassment and hurt that I wouldn’t have anticipated feeling so keenly. Then again, I would never have anticipated anyone thinking I’d been making out with a girl in a crawlspace either. All I could do, though, was channel it all into my plan.

Once it became clear that Chloe was too upset to talk, we were both taken into Gill’s office. It seemed that Chloe’s refusing to admit to fooling around with me was all the preliminaries necessary and it was now time to move to the trial phase of the proceedings. I’d never been asked anything. I was already guilty in their eyes and as there was no one to call to talk sense into me, apparently, there was no point in trying.

I pushed down another stab of confused hurt when I met Gill’s disappointed gaze.

Chloe had stopped bothering to argue and simply sat mute.

Gill turned on me then deciding for some reason that getting me to confess to luring Chloe down to the basement to make out or whatever would somehow help the situation. I decided Chloe had the right idea.

“Whatever,” I muttered, crossing my arms and waiting for the verdict.

Finally, Gill gave up trying to get us to confess to the charges and went straight to the sentencing.

"This isn't the first time you two have... tangled," she said, as if trying to be delicate now after they’d already accused us of all but having sex down there. "And I have a feeling it won't be the last,” she continued. “We need to nip this in the bud and the only way we're going to do that is with a transfer. One of you will have to go."

Okay, immediate transfer wasn’t what I’d been hoping for. Damn. Still, this could work. If I...

"I will,” Chloe said dully. It was almost me that jumped this time.

Shit! Shit! Shit! Having her transferred right now was not in my plans. It might screw up everything! There may yet be a way of salvaging this, I though frantically. If they waited to transfer her at least until tomorrow, I may be able to talk Simon into a rescue mission tonight. It would mean him taking Chloe with him and I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t be a liability once out of Lyle House but…

Oddly, it was Davidoff, who’d also been called in for this little conference, who came to my rescue.

"No one's going anywhere," he said firmly. "For now, I'm putting you both on notice.”

The relief was staggering. I’d may never liked Davidoff much but now I couldn’t have been happier that he was there.

My mind spun. The situation wasn’t just saved. It was now absolutely, undeniably _perfect_.

This was all the ammunition I needed to get Simon to move fast. 

Between them, Victoria and the doctors had set the stage perfectly.


	16. Chapter 15: Two Steps Back

  
**~ Chapter 15 ~**  
Two Steps Back

As we left Gill’s office Chloe paused in the hall, wiping at the front of her shirt even though there was nothing there, pointedly ignoring me. She was probably embarrassed. Well, too bad. We simply didn’t have time for her to be squeamish. If I was going to use this incident to full effect I had to strike while the iron was hot and the shock was fresh.

Finally, I got tired of waiting. "What are you wiping at?" I asked as quietly as I could without whispering, conscious that the adults weren’t all that far away.

Contrary to popular opinion whispers actually carry farther than speaking quietly does. It also draws the attention as whispers suggest stealth and secrets. People just naturally tune in when they hear something like that. Speaking quietly therefore is both harder to hear and far less likely to draw attention. Besides, I didn’t think it would look good to be caught whispering together at this point.

"A spot.” She still didn’t look at me, entirely focused on the non-existent spot.

"There's no spot,” I told her.

She straightened up and adjusted her shirt, clearly attempting to keep up the pretense. Why, I had no idea since we both knew it was a pretense.

“That's because I fixed it.” Okay, so she didn’t stutter this time but she still couldn’t lie worth a damn. She’d just been stalling in hopes that I’d walk away so she wouldn’t have to walk down the hall with me.

Chloe then tried to move past me toward the girl’s side stairs, still not meeting my eyes.

"We need to talk," I told her.

She finally looked at me and I could tell she was embarrassed, annoyed and exhausted. I couldn’t fault her for that since I was as well. But as much I’d have loved to take the evening to mentally regroup, I couldn’t afford to allow her and Simon that time. If I pushed now I might be able to get Simon to agree to leave quickly. 

"Do you really think that's a good idea?" she whispered back petulantly. I bit back the automatic impulse to explain why whispering was a bad idea. It would almost certainly get her back up and that wouldn’t help at the moment.

She was being difficult so I used the only trump card I had. "Simon'll be there," I said. "Five minutes. Out back."

*** * ***

Simon was waiting when I got back to our room and nearly jumped up from his bed where he’d been drawing in his sketchbook when I entered.

 _This_ was my brother. Eyes focused and attention entirely engaged, automatically drawing when he had nothing else at hand to do. When waiting or worried or anything, he’d always started drawing automatically. It was just a Simon thing. It was one of the many things that had changed after we’d ended up here. To come into our room and find him drawing while he worriedly waited for news was possibly one of the best sights I’d ever seen.

“What the hell?!” he demanded. “They just sent us all to our rooms and wouldn’t tell us anything. Just that something had happened between you and Chloe.”

I flopped down on my bed, feeling overwhelmed by everything and beyond grateful just to be here in our room with my brother again where I didn’t have to lie or pretend.

“Tori tried to kill Chloe, Chloe raised a couple of zombies and now she and I are both on notice for transfer because they think we’ve been fooling around together.”

“Okay... what?” Simon demanded, dropping onto the edge of my bed beside me.

All I wanted to do was rest. I felt far more worn than I should have done for the amount of activity involved. All I could guess was that the fear and adrenaline had sapped my energy. My head had started to hurt at some point and my muscles were starting to ache slightly for no good reason. All I wanted to do was sleep. Unfortunately, sleep wasn’t on the table.

I explained as quickly as possible, watching Simon go pale as I explained what Tori had done.

He wiped his mouth and looked away. “That’s my fault, right?”

I sat up surprised. “How the hell...?”

“It’s ‘cause she likes me and I haven’t exactly hidden the fact that I like Chloe...”

I cut him off. I really didn’t have time for this kind of nonsense. “When have you ever given Tori the slightest encouragement? When did you ever let her think even for a moment that you were interested in her?”

Simon nodded, still clearly unhappy. “I know but...”

“Tori’s screwed up, bro,” I interrupted again, impatient with this line of thought. “You kept telling her that you’re not interested but she’s such a snobby little princess she can’t get it through her head that she can’t have whatever she wants. Then Chloe gets here and Tori decides to blame her for everything that’s wrong with her life, from you not liking her to Liz’s being transferred to Tori herself still being here. That’s got nothing to do with you and everything to do with the reason she’s here in the first place. She’s unstable and that’s all there is to it.”

Simon nodded, then visibly shook it off. “Yeah, okay. So... zombies?”

“I’ll explain out back, we’re meeting Chloe,” I said as I forced my tired body up off the bed. I nearly shoved Simon out of our room ahead of me.

I had Simon ask Talbot to let us out into the yard and that was easy enough. Once out there I briefly outlined the incident with the zombies before quickly moving on to the aftermath, which for my purposes was the most important part of the afternoon’s adventure.

Simon looked grim. The basketball was lying on the grass near the hoop and he picked it up, idly bouncing it on the ground and catching it again. For a moment or two he was silent, focused on the ball as he though.

“Okay,” he said at last. “What do we do?”

Finally.

For months he’d been flatly refusing to listen to me. Now, finally – _finally_ – he was willing to listen. He was asking for my advice again, accepting that I knew what should happen now. I nearly started shaking. So much rested on this.

My voice was flat when I spoke, my tone brooking no argument. “You go find Dad.”

When Simon’s head jerked up I could see the automatic denial forming on his lips. I didn’t let him voice it.

“This isn’t just about us any more. For God’s sake Simon, I can take care of myself for a few damn days! If you go I’ll be fine until Dad comes to get me. If you don’t go... Can you imagine what they’d do to Chloe in a real asylum? What do you think it would it take to make you or I stop seeing trees or knowing what they are when we do see them? ‘Cause that’s what they would have to do to Chloe before she stopped seeing the dead. Necromancers are vulnerable anyway because of what they see. A lot of them go crazy even with the help and support of other necros. How long do you think it would take before they _made_ her crazier than they think she is now?”

Simon had gone pale as I talked, the basketball stilled in his hands.

I let that sink in for a moment before continuing.

“Which of us, Chloe or me, is in the most danger right now?”

Simon looked away, the conflict clear on his face. I felt for him, I really did. At some level it would be impossible for him not to see this as being forced to choose between Chloe and me. And I hated forcing him to make that choice, but none of us could afford for me to relent here.

I couldn’t leave. I was too volatile, too dangerous. The safety of everyone around me demanded that I remain and try to get better.

But Simon had to leave. For himself, for Dad, for me and now for Chloe as well.

I could see Simon fighting the knowledge that I was right. I could also see that I was finally winning.

For once, I managed to hold myself back, allowing my words to sink in as we waited for Chloe in uneasy silence.

*** * ***

It was with more than little annoyance that I stomped back into the house a half an hour later.

Scent and sound lead me to where Chloe was curled up on one end of the sofa in the media room, talking to Rachelle who was curled up on the other end.

“The worst of it –“ Rae was saying as I entered, she broke off glaring up at me in the doorway. “What do you want?”

I came around the front of the couch and when Chloe looked up at me I tapped my watch. “Did I say five minutes?” I asked.

“Yes, you did.” Chloe gave me as cool a look as I’d ever seen her give anyone. “And I said it wasn't a good idea.”

Dammit, I did not have time for this. “We need to talk to you,” I ground out.

I must have sounded far too threatening. Rae started to get up, the light of battle in her eyes. “Should I get the nurses?” she asked, clearly intending to do whatever it took to defend Chloe from me. 

Chloe waved her down. When she turned back to me it was with a look that had gone from cool to downright cold. “No,” she said firmly.

Part of me wanted to grab her and haul her out of the room. Instead I shoved my hands in my pockets. Rocking back on my heels I considered her. I didn’t have much leverage with Chloe and my trump card hadn’t worked this last time but it was still the only one I had. “Simon wants to talk to you,” I told her.

Rae was having none of it. “Does Simon have feet?” she snapped. “A mouth? What are you? His faithful Saint Bernard, lumbering around, bearing your master's messages?”

That stung, far more than it should have. Rachelle had no idea what I was. She was just being pissy. Nonetheless her words hit a nerve that ached at the touch. 

There had been more than one nurse when I was a child who made dog jokes at our expense, saying we were more like puppies than children. They’d smiled as they said it, as if that made it a harmless joke. They’d fooled no one. They’d believed we were less than they were. Dogs to be caged and monitored. Animals to be disposed of when we were no longer useful.

Killed because we weren’t safe to be around real people.

I shut down that line of thought savagely, as it came far too close to a painful truth.

Refusing to give Rae the satisfaction of knowing her barb had struck home, I turned slightly so I was facing only Chloe.

I hated this. Chloe was looking up at me, utterly calm in her denial. The frightened kitten was gone. I’d never seen her this composed, this in control of herself and her situation. I didn’t know what to say, how to get her to move. It seemed I’d overplayed my trump card and without it I had nothing.

“Chloe?” I couldn’t help the pleading from creeping into my voice. She was all I had to get Simon moving. “Chloe, ple –“ I held the syllable looking down into her unmoved expression.

Then I turned and left the room. I was not going to beg. I had little enough left to me at this point. No father, a brother I kept fighting with, a therapist who thought I was nothing but a hormone driving idiot... Maybe it was stupid to try and keep my pride at this point. After all, what did it matter after all? But somehow the idea of begging, especially under Rachelle’s scornful derision and Chloe’s cool indifference, was too much.

“Bye!” Rae called after me, the mocking in her tone sharp and bitter. “Always a pleasure chatting with you!”

“You are going to tell me what all this is about, right?” she asked Chloe as soon as she thought I was out of earshot.

“I promise,” Chloe answered, sounding relieved now that I was gone. Would she? I wondered. How much did Rachelle know already? They’d been tight since right after Chloe arrived. It was Rae who’d helped her get into Gill’s office, Rae who had been helping her try to get in to the closet. It was Rae Chloe confided in. I just didn’t know how much she confided in the other girl.

I tuned them out. Simon was waiting for me by the stairs, having followed me inside. I realized that from where he was he probably had heard the whole thing.

“Let me try talking to her, okay?” he asked. I almost couldn’t breathe for the relief.

“Just get her away from Rachelle and bring her outside,” I told him before continuing down the hall.

Once outside I felt like I could breathe again. It was too hot inside, too close. I realized much to my surprise that I was sweating and the achy feeling from earlier was worse rather than better. What the hell was wrong with me? I couldn’t be getting sick. One of the very few things about being a werewolf that was actually useful was the fact that I never got sick.

I sat down on the bench on one side of the yard and allowed the evening air to cool me down, both mentally and physically. I wondered if maybe I’d eaten something bad. I’d always had an iron-clad stomach but there’s a first time for everything.

Then I put it out of my mind. I didn’t have time to worry about me. I had to calm down. I was getting too worked up and that wasn’t going to help. I had to keep my mind clear.

I began planning what I’d say when Simon and Chloe got there.

For once, though, I found my mind drifting. The small breeze felt so good on my overheated skin. For once I regretted my habit of wearing over-large sweatshirts all the time. It hid the muscles, though, and I’d long ago found that if people thought I was over-weight they found me less intimidating. Still, a t-shirt would have been welcome right now. Still, the cooler air felt fantastic and I breathed it in deeply. Someone was burning leaves not that far away. A tangy addition to the smells of trees and grass and exhaust and…

It was some little time later that I came back to myself with a start, realizing that I’d all but dozed off sitting out here.

What the hell? I wondered. Why was I this tired? Okay, it had been one hell of a day but that was no excuse when my constitution was taken into account.

Annoyed I looked at my watch. It had been nearly an hour. I gritted my teeth and headed back inside. Again.

I could hear Chloe’s voice from the media room. “– might be stuck in Buffalo,” she was saying. “But I'm wired. I subscribe to Variety, Creative Screenwriting, a whack of industry loops, bookmark the blogs... If I want to be in this business, I have to know this business. The sooner the better.”

What the hell was she talking about? What business?

Simon sounded impressed. “Oh, man. I don't even know what I want to be yet.”

“I can hire you to do all my fog effects,” Chloe said almost flirtatiously as I rounded the corner. I should have found the tone encouraging but all the mental cool I’d managed to accumulate while I’d sat outside evaporated when I looked into the media room.

Chloe was laying on her stomach on the couch looking down at Simon who was lying on the floor, propped up on one elbow. They looked relaxed and happy, like there was nothing at all wrong with the world. While I’d been sitting patiently outside waiting for them they’d been in here comfortably chatting. Transfers forgotten. Dad forgotten. Tori forgotten. Me forgotten.

Simon laughed at Chloe’s lame joke before looking up and seeing me in the doorway. “Hey, bro,” he said easily. “Get enough fresh air?”

I came into the room, almost seething. “I wanted to talk to you,” I said, glaring at first him then Chloe. “Both of you.”

“Then pull up a chair,” Simon said. Neither of them moved from their reclined positions, looking as though they hadn’t a care in the world. “The current topic of conversation is zombie movies.” He glanced at Chloe. “Are we still on zombie movies?”

“I think so,” she responded easily. This girl, relaxed and calm, was a far cry from the girl of earlier who’d been shaking as I held onto her. It was hard to imagine that they were the same person.

This couldn’t be happening. After being knocked out, tied up, raising zombies, laying zombies and being threatened by imminent transfer she ought to be a mess. Instead she was more collected than I’d ever seen her, lying on the couch chatting with Simon about... Wait, what had he said?

“Zombie movies?” I repeated slowly. That had to be a bad joke. I lowered my voice to make sure no one heard me. “Have you two forgotten what happened today?”

“Nope.” Simon grinned over at Chloe who smiled back in what I felt was an annoyingly simpering way. “That's why we're talking about it,” he said. “Kinda.”

I could hear Van Dop passing through the hall and so lowered my voice father. “Chloe is in danger,” I said, carefully annunciating each world. “Serious danger. And you're lounging around, yapping about zombie movies?”

“Lounging? Yapping? Good word choices. Very evocative,” Simon said dismissively. “You making a point? I know perfectly well what happened and what it could mean for Chloe. But the sky isn't going to fall if we don't discuss it this very minute, Chicken Little.” He took a moment to stretch, appearing even more at his ease. “Right now, I think we could all use some time to just chill.”

“Chill?”

After all of this, all the work I’d done, all I’d gone through... for him and Dad. Day in and day out Simon had refused to do anything. I planned and schemed and worked and none of it, not a damn bit of it was for myself. All that mattered to me was my family. But Simon couldn’t even be bothered to talk about it now?

“You do a lot of that, don't you?” I demanded stalking over to stand over him. “In fact, that's pretty much all you do.”

I’d nearly forgotten about Chloe for a moment but she took that opportunity to stand up. She looked more the nervous kitten again instead of the calm young woman of a moment before. “I-I'd better see if Rae needs help. With her chores,” she stammered, clearly wanting to be anywhere else at that moment.

Simon sat up. “Hold up. We're almost done here.”

He turned a glare at me. “Right?”

“Sure,” I said, both unable and unwilling to keep the sneer of my tone. I was so freaking sick of this, of being the only one who seemed to give a damn about anything. I’d thought about little else for three months, fighting to get Simon to do something, _anything_ , and he wouldn’t. And now, after he _finally_ started listening to me, admitting that we did have to do something… _Now,_ he was turning his back on it all again.

“Go ahead,” I told him. “Take it easy. I'm sure Dad will walk in that door any minute and rescue us. And if he's in trouble? If he needs help? Well, too bad, 'cause that would require effort and you're too busy... chilling.” I put as much venom as I could into the last word.

It had Simon all but jumping to his feet and we stood glaring at each other for a moment. Past arguments, words neither of us could ever take back, seemed to hang in the air between us. I could almost hear the echoes.

In that moment I came as close to hating my brother as I ever would.

He turned away then, unsaid words ringing in the air. “Let's go,” he muttered pushing Chloe toward the door. She hesitated only a moment and then they were gone and I was alone.


	17. Chapter 16: Capitulation and Confrontation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This has nothing to do with me. Don't you dare pretend it does."

  
**~ Chapter 16 ~**  
Capitulation and Confrontation

  


I couldn't face going up our room for fear Simon would be there, but I couldn't think of anywhere else to go either. I prowled the media room for a long time, furious both with Simon and myself.

I had no idea what to do now. I'd worked too hard on this to watch it all blow up in my face. But what was I supposed to do at this point? I'd succeeded in making Simon and Chloe a team. Unfortunately, they were now apparently united against _me_ and didn't even want to hear what I had to say any more. They weren't interested in what was going on. They'd rather hang around and laugh about zombie movies — _zombie movies_ — instead of facing facts and doing what had to be done.

I'd thought after that afternoon that I had it all in hand. Apparently not. And if neither of them was going to take any of this seriously any more, what were my chances of actually getting Simon to leave, getting help to Dad? None.

It was nearly an hour later when I finally calmed down enough to sit.

For once, I honestly had no idea what to do next. My mind spun in circles trying to find something to do, some step I could take. There was nothing, though, I would just had to wait. I could be patient when waiting for things to happen. I was good at patience, at least when not in social situations. This was different. I wasn't waiting for seeds I'd planted to bear fruit. I was just waiting because there was nothing I could do to effect anything it seemed. As long as Simon and Chloe pushed me away I was useless.

I tried calming myself with one of my war games on the computer but gave up after I lost three battles in quick succession because I simply couldn't focus.

Dinner was a strained affair. I said nothing to anyone, I didn't even look at anyone.

Chloe and Simon came in together smelling of fresh air. They sat together but didn't talk either. I sat on the other side of the table, ate everything I could get my hands on as quickly as possible and then escaped upstairs. 

Unfortunately, it was barely fifteen minutes later when Simon followed me. I sat on my bed and pretended to read a book, intent on ignoring him.

Simon stood at the foot of the bed and glared at me.

"You got your way,” he told me stiffly.

I wanted to just keep reading and pretend he wasn’t there, but I knew that would be both childish and unproductive. My head ached worse that it had earlier and I just didn’t have the energy to keep fighting.

I dropped the book onto my lap and looked up at him.

I was so _tired_ of this. We’d always been a team, Simon and I. He was my brother, my best friend. Now, anger and resentment hung thick between us, a wall I didn’t know how to breach any more. My nerves were raw after the day I’d had and because of it the constant friction there was between us these days hurt worse than ever.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, not bothering to keep how tired I was out of my voice. Any kind of pretense would have taken too much energy.

“We’re going,” Simon told me. “Me and Chloe. We’ll do what you want and leave you behind. Are you happy now? I’m going to abandon you, is that enough?”

I just stared at him.

I’d won. After all this, all the work and the heartache and the planning, it was when I’d begun to think I might have lost all together that I won.

I should be happy, ecstatic even. I should be filled with vindication and bubbling over with plans. I felt none of that. My head felt fuzzy with the need for sleep and I just felt blank.

After a moment, though, the relief came. So, intense I actually had to swallow a lump from my throat. I felt weak from the release of a weight I’d been caring for three endless months.

I took a deep breath, forcing myself to think.

“Wait,” I said, the rest of what he’s said finally sinking in. “Chloe’s going with you?”

Simon shrugged. “You’re right that at the moment she’s in more danger than you are. It makes sense.”

It did, actually. It took some work to get my mind working beyond the fuzzy feeling but once it did it began spinning with new plans.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s talk about the next step.”

And just like that, we were a team again.

*** * ***

Mind whirling with everything I needed to do to get Simon and Chloe out of Lyle House, it wasn't until I'd switched on the light in the bathroom and turned toward the mirror that I realized I wasn't alone. I couldn't stop the yelp of surprise that escaped me as I saw Chloe reflected in the glass. Well, she’d finally succeeded in getting me back for all the times I’d startled her.

"Are you nuts?" I demanded, trying not to be too loud. "What are you doing here?"

She said nothing, just stepped past me from where she’d been tucked between the shower and the shelves to close and lock the door.

What the hell?

"If you want to discuss the plan, this really isn't the place,” I told her.

Still, she said nothing and I watched her as she walked over to the shower and turned the cold on full. For once in my life, I was utterly baffled. 

"Great," I said. "Now they're going to think we're showering together. Maybe we can just tell them we were washing off the crawl space dirt and trying to conserve water."

If anyone found us in here together we'd both be out before there was any chance to salvage anything. What the hell was she thinking?

She stepped back from the shower and stood in front of me, looking determined. "You set me up."

I opened my mouth to respond but nothing came since I had zero idea what she was talking about. I shut my mouth.

"All this time," she went on, "I've been trying to figure out why you want to help me. Why do you care if I know I'm a necromancer? Why do you care if I get booted out? Why stick your neck out for me, like you did this afternoon?"

"I just want —" I began, but she cut me off.

"To help," she finished, clearly not buying it. "Sure, you're obnoxious and arrogant, but underneath, there's a decent guy who wants to help a fellow supernatural. Yeah, right. There has to be another reason. Today I found it. Simon."

"Yeah, Simon wanted me to be nice to you," I confirmed carefully. What the hell had her so wound up about that? I didn't think it mattered why you were nice to someone, only that you were. Apparently, the fact that I wasn't trying to help her because I cared about her specifically was an issue. "Okay?" I asked. "Can I have my shower now? Alone?"

She ignored me and pressed on as though I hadn't even spoken. "You want Simon to run away. To find your Dad. But he won't go without you. He needs a reason to go right now. So you gave him one. The designated damsel in distress."

Oh shit.

"I don't know what you're talking about." The response was automatic but I looked away as I said it and I knew as soon as I’d done it that I'd screwed any chance I had of salvaging this at that moment.

"Here I was," she almost hissed. "A real necromancer, naive and lost. Perfect bait. Just keep pushing us together, make a big deal out of how helpless I am, and eventually he'll pull on his shining armor. Great plan. But it still lacks something. Stakes. In any great thriller, your hero needs three things. Goal, motivation, and stakes. Goal: find your missing Dad. Motivation: help the poor necromancer chick. The stakes were missing, though. You needed to put your damsel in actual distress. What if she was about to be transferred to a real mental hospital? Where she'd be out of Simon's reach and beyond help? Or, worse, where she might die, the victim of some evil plan. So you get Tori to —"

"No!" I did look back at her then, honestly horrified. My hands went up in automatic denial. Did she really think I was as bad as that? I’d screwed up when it came to her more than once, I’d be the first to admit. But was she kidding? "I did not have anything to do with that. Even if Tori would get close enough to me to carry on a conversation — which you may have noticed, she won't — I wouldn't do that. I did nothing to make them transfer you."

"Okay, so you just took advantage of the situation.” Her voice remained cool and bitter.

There was nothing to say to that. I could see it in her expression. She knew. She knew it all and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about that fact. She paused for only a moment before seeming satisfied that my silence was enough of an answer. In all honestly, it was.

"When I first told you about seeing Liz, you brushed it off. But then you realized this could work in your favor, so you changed your tune with Simon. You planted the seeds of doubt, then waited for them to sprout. That's why you didn't argue when I offered to be the one transferred. That's exactly where you wanted me. You manipulated the situation and you lied —"

"I never lied." I didn't have much in my favor, she was right I'd manipulated the situation, I'd failed to even try to make it better. But I had _never_ lied to her Not about what she was, the danger she was in, none of it. That was the whole point! She _was_ in danger. If she wasn't then I'd never have been able to get this plan to work.

She gave me a look I couldn't entirely interpret. When the hell had she gone from totally transparent to utterly unreadable?

"You really heard the doctors talking about transferring me yesterday?" Her tone said she didn’t buy it.

Crap. I shoved my hands in my pockets. I hadn't lied but...

"I heard them talking about you and they seemed to be suggesting —"

"Okay, you didn't lie. You exaggerated," she snapped, interrupting me again.

I didn't like it but she wouldn't listen to anything else I said about that. "You are in danger," I said. "The more I think about Liz —"

"Cut the crap, okay, Derek?" she said. "You got your wish. Simon’s going. I'm going with him. You're right. He needs to get out and find his father. Of course, you could have saved us all this trouble by just going with him yourself. But that might be dangerous. And he's not your father so it's not really your problem —"

The anger rose up so fast that I barely had time to stop myself from shoving her as I darted forward to stand in front of her. How _dare_ she?! She stumbled back a pace, taken aback by my sudden movement but then seemed to catch herself. She had to tilt her head back to look up at me but she did so with as much defiance as she could manage.

"Is that what I think, Chloe?" I demanded.

I could see the desire to back down but she didn't, standing up even straiter and failing to look away.

"I don't know what you think, Derek," she said, calmly. There was only the fainest of trembles to her voice. "Simon says there's a reason you won't go. A stupid reason, according to him. So maybe it's an excuse. Maybe you just don't want to bother."

"An excuse?" I laughed. It was bitter sound and it hurt. I forced myself to step back a pace.

Of course, Simon would say it was just a stupid reason. Of course, he would belittle it all to the point where Chloe thought that I was just making up nothing excuses because I didn't really care about Dad. All this and it _still_ came back to this. Over and over. Nothing I said or did seemed to make any difference.

"You read my file, right?" I demanded, struggling to remain calm.

"I —" she trailed off, obviously taken aback by the change in topic.

"I know you read it that night when you and Rae pretended to be raiding the kitchen," I told her.

She flushed slightly as though embarrassed. "Only because of what you did. I had to know —" she began, clearly trying to defender herself.

This time it was me who interrupted her. "How dangerous I was," I finished. "I don't blame you. But you got your answer, right? You know exactly how dangerous I am."

She swallowed. "I —" she tried only to trail off again. 

I didn't give her the chance to come up with an answer. "You know what I did," I said ruthlessly. "And you think I should be walking the streets?" I couldn't help the contempt I knew mush show in my expression and voice. I didn’t care. She could think what she liked but I _was not_ going to stand there and let her tell me that I didn’t give a damn about the man who’d given me a home when everyone else thought I should be tossed out with the garbage.

"I'm exactly where I belong," I told her firmly.

She looked past me, the anger gone from her expression. For a moment we stood in silence except for the white noise of falling water.

Finally, she looked back at me. "You must have had a reason for doing it."

Was she kidding? I knew she was like Simon in some ways but if one more person...

"Did I?" I demanded. She tried to look away again and I stepped to the side, forcing her to maintain eye contact. Chloe wasn't a fool and she wasn't family. There was no possible way I could allow her to take Simon's side in this. I couldn't have articulated why, but in this one thing I wanted her to side with me. It was stupid. Who the hell cared what Chloe Saunders thought of me? Why did I want her to agree with me? But I couldn’t stand for one more person to throw it all in my face, refuse to acknowledge this one damn fact. That I was at fault for this. That I was sick and needed help.

"Is that what you want, Chloe?" I demanded. "To hear my reason? My excuse? That the guy pulled a gun on me and if I hadn't thrown him into a wall, I'd be dead? Well, that's not how it happened. There's a kid out there who'll never walk again and I have no excuse. It's my fault. All my fault. Our Dad disappearing. Simon being thrown in here. I —"

I closed my mouth cutting off the flow of sound and swallowing back the rest of the words which turned to acid in my stomach. What was I doing? Why did I care? I shoved my hands back into my pockets and this time I was the one to look away, staring at the blank wall behind her head, seeing that kid lying so still at the base of a wall. I fought to control the anger and the hurt and the fear and the helpless grief I still felt.

"So, yeah," I said finally when I was sure I could speak in a reasonable tone of voice without ranting at her. "I want Simon out and I'll do anything to get him out, but it's not like I'm putting you in danger. You're getting something out of it. You don't have any reason to complain."

"No danger?" she said slowly as though I was crazy. "I'm running away. From the home. From my family. From my life."

Seriously, she wanted me to feel sorry for her? She was getting what she really wanted. "You'll be with Simon. Don't pretend that's any big hardship." Why that thought was suddenly a bitter one I didn't know.

She looked at me like was nuts. "What?"

"You know what I mean," I snapped back. Was she really going to make me spell this out? "A few days alone with Simon? That'll be tough. And it means a lot to him. A lot. Running away to help him find his Dad? He'll never forget that."

She did that thing again where she widened her eyes to the point where she stared to look like some kind of anime character. "Oh my God, do you think so?" she said, feigning shocked pleasure for all she was worth. "Really? That's so cool. I bet he'll ask me to go steady and everything. We can send love letters between my juvenile detention center and his, and maybe they'll let us meet at the coed dances. . . ."

I said nothing. I wasn't interested in her sarcasm.

"You really think I'm an idiot, don't you?" she demanded and then put her hand up to forestall any reply as though I'd attempted to jump in. "No, don't answer that. Please. News flash: getting a boyfriend is not at the top of every girl's priority list. Right now, it ranks about as low on mine as you can get — way below such trivial concerns as getting my life back together."

Okay, now I did feel like a bit of a fool. It didn't make me feel any more charitably disposed towards her but I could inwardly admit that I'd clearly misjudged her on that score. But hell, how she and Simon were mooning over each other all the time, what else was I supposed to think?

"All right —" I began.

Again, she pretended I hadn't even spoken. "After this is over, I wouldn't be surprised if Simon wanted to never see me again. Just put this all behind him. You know what? That's fine. Because I need to find out what happened to Liz. And I want to help Simon because it's the right thing to do, not because I think he's sooo cute. I might not be a genius like you —"

I glared at her. I hated it when people decided that just because I wasn't as stupid as I looked I had to be some kind of freak. "I'm not —" I started, but again got no farther. I was starting to really get sick of her interrupting me.

"But I'm smart enough to know this isn't going to be some grand romantic adventure," Chloe went on. "I'm running away. I'll be living on the streets. Even if we find your Dad, I'm not sure he's going to be able to fix my life. I'm not sure it can be fixed," she added on a slightly forlorn note.

Oh right, cause she had it _so_ bad.

"So I'm supposed to be grateful to you for going?" I asked, annoyed even more because I suspected that it was true.

"I never said —" she started.

There was a certain pleasure that came with cutting her off this time. I steeped forward to get her attention and shut her up for two seconds so I could talk. "You need to get out of here just as much as Simon does, maybe more. You might not see the danger you're in but I do. And I'm worried."

"Worried? About me?" She sounded like she didn't believe me.

And for the first time I realized that I was worried. About her specifically, for her own sake. It wasn’t a comfortable realization and I shrugged awkwardly, trying to find my mental balance again.

I'd never much cared for anyone other than Simon and Dad and a very few family friends. To standing here now and realizing that I was genuinely worried about a girl I'd known for less than a week... It wasn’t comfortable.

"Sure," I said, fighting back a surge of embarrassment I didn't understand. "Concerned. You know." I found I couldn't look at her and only hoped I wasn't blushing. "Yeah, we need you," I admitted. "But I do want to help a fellow supernatural." That was it, I was sure it was only that. After all when had the last time been when we'd been around another supernatural? A long time. "We gotta stick together," I said lamely.

"Don't you dare," she said slowly, the anger back and thick in her voice.

"What?" I demanded. But I found I couldn't hold her gaze. Confused as I suddenly was I didn't know quite how to handle this.

"You're right," she said. I couldn't take any comfort in that as her voice was colder than I'd ever heard it before. "I do need help. My life is falling apart and maybe someday I'll look back on this as the biggest, stupidest mistake I've ever made, but at this moment, it's the only solution I see. You need me to be your designated damsel in distress? Okay. But don't ever say you're doing this for me. This has nothing to do with me. Don't you dare pretend it does."

Before I could answer she turned, unlocked the door and left, shutting the door softly but firmly behind her.

I didn’t move for a long time, staring at the closed door before finally stepping forward to lock it after her.

I was surprised to see that my hand shook slightly as I did.


	18. Chapter 17: Midnight Visit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I felt like crap, I wanted to go back to bed and the last thing I wanted was to be down here eating crow. "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still unbetaed but hopefully I'll have a beta reader again soon. I thought you guys wouldn't mind an unbetaed chapter. 
> 
> Happy Early St. Patrick's Day!

  
**~ Chapter 17 ~**  
Midnight Visit

  


I was lost.

The forest closed in around me on all sides and every way I turned there were just more trees. It didn’t seem to matter which way I went, there was no sign of a path or any end to the woods. I tripped over roots and got caught in low hanging branches, clumsy in a way I never was. It was like my body was all wrong and I couldn’t make it do what I wanted. I couldn’t seem to lift my feet high enough or see far enough ahead to avoid obstacles. I was crashing through the underbrush like a bull, getting up only to fall again.

I was making too much noise. Far too much. And somewhere in the shadows between the trees eyes glinted.

I was being hunted and with every moment that passed, every wrong turn in my quest for a way out, there were more and more eyes out there. 

Simon was here somewhere. I had to find him, get him to safety before the hunters realized he was here. And I had to tell him something. Something important about Dad. Or was it about Chloe?

A soft tapping was coming from somewhere close. I turned in circles, trying to locate the sound.

"Derek?"

One of the trees, something was knocking against one of the trees. Except it sounded hollow and that didn’t make any sense. The tapping came again…

My eyes snapped open and I lay disoriented in the darkness.

Simon snored softly from the bed beside mine, his sleep undisturbed by dreams.

I’d been dreaming. It was just a dream. But what had woken me?

"Derek?"

Chloe’s voice, soft but insistent. I blinked toward the door realizing that she must have been knocking. Too softly to wake Simon but she knew I’d hear her just the same.

Stumbling out of the bed, I felt mussier than ever, barely able to think through the fog in my brain.

I pulled open the door to find Chloe standing in the hall, hand raised to knock again. Apparently, she hadn’t heard me coming to the door as she stared, her hand hanging in the air for a moment she dropped it and looked away.

"Chloe?" I muttered, trying to wake up. My body still felt as heavy as it had in the dream as if it wasn’t fully under my control, and I was absolutely drenched in sweat. Was that from the dream also? "Chloe? What —?"

"You owe me,” she said, eyes snapping up to glare at me.

"Huh?" God, I must have really been asleep. I rubbed at my eyes with thumb and forefinger, unable to stifle a yawn. I tried rolling my shoulders to force myself to wake up. It didn’t work. "What time is it?" I muttered.

"Late,” Chloe said. “Or early.” She shook her head. “It doesn't matter. I need your help and you owe me. Get dressed and be downstairs in five minutes."

Without another word she turned and headed back down the stairs. Belatedly I realized that I was standing there in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. I felt a touch of heat in my own face as I realized that I’d been standing in front of her all but naked. That explained why she’d told me to get dressed when she herself had only been wearing fuzzy pajama bottoms and a long sleeved t-shirt, and probably why she’d been blushing when she left.

My head hurt, my brain refusing to clear and for some reason I _itched_. I squinted down at my arms as I scratched, trying to see if there was some kind of rash or something. I wasn’t allergic to anything that I knew of but I supposed it was possible there was something out there I was allergic to. I didn’t see anything but scratching at it didn’t seem to help much. The relief was momentary at best. I wondered if the nurses had any calamine lotion with the first aid supplies. I couldn’t seem to remember.

I grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt but pulling them on seem to take far more effort that it should have. My arms and legs felt like lead, aching as well as itching and I was still sweating heavily. Great, an unknown allergy. That was all I needed right now.

The nurses hadn’t started using another disinfectant or something. I was pretty sure I’d have smelled it if they had. Lyle House was a more or less a closed environment, there wasn’t much I could have come into contact with that hadn’t been here for a while. So, what could be causing this reaction? I decided I’d worry about it when my head cleared a little, after all there was little I could do about it at the moment.

I considered shaking Simon awake. He slept like the dead and Chloe had been careful to make as little noise as possible. She’d said for me to meet her downstairs, not to wake Simon and come downstairs. Still, I considered waking him anyway. I wasn’t certain I wanted to be alone with her. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure what she wanted to talk about. Simon hadn’t been annoyed or angry with me last night when I’d come back to our room after my shower, so it seemed fairly clear Chloe hadn’t shared her revelation with him. In the end, I decided that I couldn’t risk having him angry with me again at this point. There was too much to do.

Chloe was standing in the hall as I came down, having pulled a sweatshirt on over her pajamas. Was it really cold enough for that? It felt sweltering to me.

"Fleas?” she asked playfully and it was only then that I realized I’d started scratching my arm again.

I glared. There was no way for her to know what chord that struck, no way for her to know how painful her little joke was.

"Let's just get this over with,” I snapped. “I'm not in a good mood.”

She seemed about to say something more before apparently deciding against it. Waving me into the media room, she shut the door behind us and paused, clearly listening for any possibility of our having been overheard. 

"We're fine here," I told her. Both Talbot and Van Dop were still in their rooms, I’d made sure of that before I’d come down. "Just keep it down. Someone comes, I'll hear."

Apparently willing to take my word for it, Chloe headed over to stand in the moonlight that poured in through the front windows. Not for the first time I was thankful that the whole thing about werewolves and the full moon was complete nonsense. Not that the moon was exactly full, I noted, glancing through the window as I joined her. Still, it was pretty close and the bright light gave Chloe her first good look at me.

"You've got a fever.” There was clear concern in her voice. 

"Maybe," I admitted, trying to shove my hair back from my face where the sweat made it cling uncomfortably. "Something I ate, I guess."

"Or some bug you picked up," she suggested.

I shook my head. “I don’t…” I broke off. I’d never been sick, not really. I’d had had the flu one year when the strain going around had been particularly bad and there had been the chicken pox but that was pretty much it. Still, even after admitting that I’d be able to hear it if either of the nurses left their room upstairs, it felt uncomfortable to put into words one more way in which I was a freak. Even other supernaturals caught colds like everybody else. “I don't get sick,” I admitted. “Not often anyway. Part of my... condition. This seems to be a reaction.” I only then caught myself scratching my arm again. “No big deal,” I assured her. “I'm just off. Crankier than usual, Simon would say."

Chloe didn’t look convinced. “You should go back to bed,” she said. “Forget this —”

"No,” I interrupted her. The last thing I wanted was sympathy and coddling from her of all people. I’d set her up, I’d used her vulnerable position for my own purposes and then I’d lied about it. The fact that she would be getting something out of the end result didn’t matter. I knew I’d be livid if someone had played me as I had her. I sure has hell wouldn’t be overly concerned about that person’s health. “You're right. I owe you. What do you need?"

She didn’t it like it, I could tell. I was about to tell her to get on with it when she nodded to herself.

“Hold on,” she said before heading out into hall.

“Chloe!” I tried calling after her even while trying not to make to much noise. “Damn, damn, damn, damn,” I muttered, leaning back into the wall by the window.

I knew I owed it to her to hear her out but at the same time there was nothing I wanted so much as to go back to bed. Why she couldn’t just get on with it, I didn’t know. That and the more moving around she did from room to room the more chance there was that she’d be heard. I’d hear if either of the nurses left their room but that didn’t mean I much relished dealing with the hiding and sneaking that would be necessary for us each to get back our rooms undetected if that happened. We absolutely could not afford to get caught down here together in the middle of the night. One of us would be gone in the morning and I couldn’t afford that at this juncture.

At least Chloe wasn’t gone long. She returned with a glass of water and four pills. Probably Tylenol as aspirin was never allowed on the premises in case of allergies.

“Two for now, two for later, in case you —” she began.

I took the four pills and swallowed them with a huge drink of the blessedly cold water.

“Or you could just take them all now,” she finished.

“I've got a high metabolism,” I explained. “Another part of my condition.” To have any effect I needed more than any human of any medication. My system just flushed everything through too damn fast. Luckily, I rarely needed medication of any kind. Still, it was a pain on the rare occasions when I did.

“I know a lot of girls who wouldn't mind that,” Chloe commented.

“Not the way I get it,” I muttered under my breath, too low for her to hear. A high metabolism wasn’t worth the fact that I was eventually going to sprout fur and a tail.

I finished the water. The cold of it felt fantastic sliding down my throat and I admitted to myself that Chloe was right. Not only did I have a fever but Tylenol and water were probably exactly what I needed. That and sleep, which I hoped to get back to as soon as possible. Speaking of which…

“Thanks, but…" I looked up and found her watching me with frank concern. I really didn’t understand this girl. “You don't need to be nice to me just because I'm not feeling great. You're mad. You've got a right to be. I used you and I made it worse by pretending I hadn't. If I were you, I wouldn't be bringing water unless it was to dump over my head.”

I turned and put the glass on a table, confident that the nurses probably wouldn’t notice that it hadn’t been there last night. Besides, even if they did they would have no way of knowing who left it there. In a house full of teenagers, midnight snack rungs are more the norm than the exception. I took the opportunity to steady myself mentally. I felt like crap, I wanted to go back to bed and the last thing I wanted was to be down here eating crow. Still, needs must.

“Okay, so you need…?” I asked turning back to her.

She waved me to the love seat and I had to repress a growl. The sooner she talked the sooner I could go back to bed. Still, when she headed over and made herself comfortable in the chair opposite I had little option but to follow her. She clearly wasn’t going to get on with it until she got her way.

“You know something about necromancy, right?” she _finally_ began once I’d sat down.

“I’m not an expert,” I told her with a shrug. In truth a great deal of what I had thought I’d known about them had been called into question after that afternoon.

“But you know more than me, Simon or anyone else I can talk to at this moment,” Chloe countered. Which explained why she was coming to me for help when she’d probably rather ask just about anyone else. “So how do necromancers contact the dead?"

“You mean like the guy in the basement?” I guessed. “If he's there, you should see him. Then you'd just talk, like we are right now.” That much, at least, I remained pretty confident about.

“I mean contacting a specific person,” she clarified. “Can I do that? Or am I restricted to those I just stumble across?”

I paused wondering where this was going before remembering something from her file. Her mother’s death when she’d just been a kid. Crap.

“If you mean your mom, Chloe —” I began carefully.

“No.” The answer was sharp. I’d clearly hit a nerve. She flushed every so slightly, probably aware she’d just jumped on me for no real reason. “I haven't even thought —” she began before correcting herself. “Well, yes, I've considered it, for someday maybe, of course I'd like to, love to —" The babbling came to an abrupt halt and Chloe took a deep breath, bringing herself back under control. When she spoke again, she was calm once more. “This is connected to our situation.”

“You mean Liz?” I seemed the next most likely probability and an intense relief. I really hadn’t wanted to deal with her trying to contact her mother. I’d read somewhere that necromancers couldn’t contact blood relatives for some strange reason. I had no idea if that was true. True or not, though, it would have made for an uncomfortable situation.

“No,” Chloe said again. “I — I should try to contact her, I guess. J-just to be sure. But that's not it. Forget why I want to know.”

I leaned back into the couch and watched her. She was still a little flushed as though I’d embarrassed her with the questions. 

“If I knew why, I could answer a lot easier,” I told her. I couldn’t see where she was going with this and it worried me. I felt that I should be able to guess but with the fever it felt like I was trying to think through gauze or something; my thoughts hazy and difficult to track.

“If I can contact a specific person, how would I do it?”

I was a little annoyed at her persistent evasions but there was little point in pressing when she had no intention of telling me. She sat, hands clasped in her lap, watching me intently. Whatever she had in mind she was clearly determined not to say anything about it until I told her what she wanted to know. So, I began to mentally go through everything I’d ever read or been told about necromancy.

“You can,” I said. “But it's not easy and it's not guaranteed at your age. Like Simon and his spells, you're at the…” I searched for a word. “Apprenticeship level,” I finally finished.

“Where I can do things by accident, like raising the dead.” It wasn’t a question but her expression made it one.

“Well, no,” I admitted. That detail still bothered me. “From what I heard, raising the dead is the toughest thing to do and it needs this complicated ritual.” I realized I was scratching again and forced myself to stop and shook my head. “I must have heard wrong. Like I said, I'm not an expert.”

“Back to how, then,” Chloe persisted. “How do I call up a specific ghost?”

I relaxed into the couch and let me head rest on the back, staring upward as I tried to remember. I’d read and heard all kinds of things about the different supernatural races over the years but I’d never made a systematic study or anything. A couple of years ago, though, Dad done some work for a necromancer who owned a small business. We hadn’t stayed there long I remembered the guy’s study well. It had been like something out of a movie, all leather chairs and the smell of his pipe smoke. I’d spent as much time there as I could get away with, not only because of the books but because it had been quiet and comfortable. There had been one book I remembered in particular. Most of what I knew or thought I knew about necros had come from that. I hated the hit and miss nature of relying only on what I remembered from a book I’d read years ago, but unfortunately it was all we had at the moment. I shuffled through it in my mind, trying to remember all the different chapters and headings. I wished now that I’d studied it more closely but I’d no reason at the time to think that I’d ever need to know much about necromantic practices. 

Finally, I nodded, forcing my brain to function through the fever. “If I remember right, there are two ways. You could use a personal effect.”

“Like with a tracking dog,” Chloe clarified.

I couldn’t stop a sort of bitter laugh, even if she had been referring to herself instead of me.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I answered. “Or like one of those psychics you see in movies, always asking for something that belonged to the person.”

“And the second way?” She was intent on the answer to that one, more so than the first. 

“You need to be at the grave,” I told her.

There was a moment of silence before she replied. “At the grave,” she said, carefully. “Presuming that's where the body is buried. It's the body that's important, not the grave site.”

I waved that away. If the body wasn’t there it would be a cenotaph, not a grave. I wasn’t the mood to explain the difference though and I doubted she’d care anyway.

“Yeah, the body,” I agreed. “The ultimate personal effect.”

“Then I think I know what that ghost in the basement wanted,” Chloe told me. 

I raised my head from the back of the couch and studied her face. She’d apparently wanted to be sure of her information before divulging her theory. I couldn’t actually fault her for that. I always wanted all the facts beforehand as well. Apparently, what’d I’d told her was exactly what she’d been hoping to hear.

“When I was...” she hesitated, hands clenching for a moment before relaxing again. “When I was tied up down there, the spirit came back. He was talking to me but it was hard to understand. It was like being tuned to a radio station that’s just too far away, cutting in and out. But some of the things were clear. He wanted me to ‘make contact’, to ‘summon them’ so I could ‘get their story’.” Chloe looked up at me, face set into worried lines. “He meant the buried bodies. That's why he wanted me to go into the crawl space. So I could get close enough to the bodies to contact those ghosts.”

My back was itching like crazy and it was making concentrating on what she was saying rather hard. Whatever the hell this reaction was, I wished like hell it would just go away. I reached around to scratch while I considered Chloe’s assertion. 

“Why?” I asked. I just couldn’t see any connection between us and those bodies.

"From what he seemed to say, it's about Lyle House,” Chloe said. “Something they can tell me." 

"But those bodies have been down there way longer than Lyle House has been a group home,” I objected. When Simon and I had been brought to Lyle House three months ago, the place had only just opened. In fact, we had been the first arrivals. The state of decomposition suggested that they’d been there for years. So, there was pretty much zero chance that it had anything to do with us. “And if this ghost knows something, why not just tell you himself?"

"I don't know. He said..." she paused, staring into space as she dredged up the memory. "He seemed to be saying he couldn't make contact with them himself."

"Then how would he know they had anything important to tell you?"

Chloe seemed to consider that for a moment. Not for the first time, I was impressed by her. Most people I knew, Simon included when he was in the wrong mood, objected to my picking apart their theories. The problem was that I couldn’t help but look at things from all angles. It was just in my nature to play devil’s advocate. Instead of getting angry though, Chloe was actually thinking about what I’d said and considering my objections.

"I don't know," she said finally. "However they got there, I'm pretty sure they didn't die of natural causes. You're probably right, and it's completely unconnected to us, and this ghost is confused, losing track of time. Or maybe he wants me to solve their murder." She stood up, everything from her posture and expression suggesting that she’d made up here mind. "But, whatever he wants me to hear, I'm going to listen. Or at least try."

"Hold up," I said lifting my hand to stall her and she tensed. I had no idea what she was expecting me to say, but right then I wasn’t about to guess.

The fact was, that she was right. Maybe this ghost was just confused but we couldn’t take that chance. If there was something he felt we needed to know, we should probably find out what it was, just in case.

Still, it took everything I had to push myself to my feet, every part of me ached.

"We should take a flashlight,” I told her. “I'll grab that. You get our shoes."


End file.
